This has been a bit of an off week. While Mike and I have quietly celebrated a few exciting developments in our lives, our happiness has been muted by some devastating news from good friends of ours. As I said to someone earlier this week, as fun as it can be to have friends and loved ones located all over the map, it’s hard to be so far away when something bad happens and you can’t rush over to provide the help, comfort and support you so desperately want to.

My heart has been heavy, my appetite dull, and I haven’t felt particularly inspired, but somehow last night I turned out something that I felt really proud of, a simple dish of favas and fregula that hit all the right notes and left me feeling, just for a while, a little lighter.

I cooked my shelled and peeled favas in olive oil with salt and a crumbled chile de arbol until they were bright green and tender, and set them aside while I worked on the fregula. I added a pinch of saffron to a pot of boiling chicken broth I had pulled from the freezer, salted it and added a squirt of tomato paste for color and richness, then added the fregula to cook. While it boiled and swelled, I tossed the favas with some chopped pickled scallions and some of my marinated grilled red peppers, giving the mixture a good slick of olive oil.

When the fregula had absorbed all of its cooking liquid I tossed it with the fava bean mixture, tossing in some chopped fresh parsley and adding a splash of sherry vinegar for brightness. I served it with crispy grilled smelts tossed with olive oil and smoked paprika, and while the combination was a good one, the fregula really stole the show. I suspect it would be great as a stand-alone dish.

I’ve talked before about how sometimes what you serve on the side of your dinner plate is the star of the meal, and this is another one of those times. Think onion rings: thin, light, crisp, with a good kick of spice, these are a far cry from those overly breaded, greasy rings served in so many restaurants, and they’re easy to make at home. The two things to remember here are to have everything ready to go before you start, and to make them just before you’ll be serving them so they stay perfectly crisp.

For two good sized servings, you’ll need:

a big bowl
1 medium red onion
flaky sea salt (I used Maldon)
Sriracha or other hot chile sauce
a zip-top bag
about 1/2 cup of unbleached white flour
vegetable oil
a pot with high sides
a spider
a tray or plate lined with paper towels

Peel the onion and slice it into thin rings. Separate the rings and place them into your bowl, then give them a healthy sprinkling of salt and as much Sriracha as you like. Toss until the onions are well coated, and set aside for 20 minutes or so, until the onions are soft and have given up much of their liquid.

Pour oil an inch or two deep into the pot and heat until shimmering. Add flour to the zip-top bag. Remove the softened onions in batches, gently squeezing out the moisture with your hands, and add them to the flour a few at a time, tossing to coat. Shake off the excess flour and CAREFULLY lower the onions into the hot oil, frying them in batches until they are crisp and golden. Using your spider, remove the rings to the paper towel-lined plate to drain, sprinkling a bit of flaky salt on top of each batch you remove.

Serve hot alongside your favorite steak, burger, or barbecue, with a frosty beverage alongside. Feel the love.

We usually have wine with dinner, and when I’m planning out the pairings, the food usually comes first. But as I was putting together a grocery order last week and browsing the bottles available through Best Cellars, I was surprised to see a white wine listed among their “Big” selections. The bottle in question was a 2004 Oriel “Dylan” Russian River Valley Chardonnay, and while I’m not usually a fan of big Chardonnays, and the bottle was a bit more spendy than we usually go for weeknight dinners, the description of the wine had me intrigued. I added it to our cart and began thinking about building a meal around it.

I like pairing scallops with Chardonnay, so I decided on that as my protein – simply seared, with a little vermouth-enriched brown butter. The side was a bit more challenging; since scallops are so mild, I tend to match them with something more aggressively flavored or seasoned, but I didn’t want to make anything overpowering. As luck or serendipity would have it, I happened upon a few recipes for celery root remoulade over the weekend, and decided to go with a variation on that theme. I added fennel and apple to the mix, and ended up with a wonderful combination of crunchy, creamy, tart, sweet and tangy – a great foil for both the scallops and our delicious bottle of wine.

Celeriac, Fennel and Apple Remoulade

1 teaspoon kosher salt
Juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon extra-hot Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
4 oz. crème fraiche
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
1 not-too-tart green apple
1 small bulb fennel
1 small celery root (celeriac)

Place kosher salt in a bowl, add lemon juice and whisk until salt is dissolved. Add mustard, mayo, crème fraiche and tarragon, and whisk again until well combined.

Core the apple, slice into matchsticks and add to dressing. Core the fennel bulb and slice as thinly as possible. Peel celery root and slice into matchsticks. Blanch the fennel and celery root briefly in unsalted water. Remove the vegetables using a spider or slotted spoon and shock them in an ice bath. Drain them well, pat dry, and add to the dressing. Toss until the mixture is well-combined, cover, and chill before serving.

It has really been one of those weeks. We’ve had lots of stressful stuff going on, not the least of which is trying to find homes for our resident kittens, and the weather this week has been completely out of whack. The stress and weather have made my health problems flare up, and unfortunately, the meals I had sketched out for the week after our usual weekend food safari have ended up getting postponed or scrapped altogether.

Our intention was to skewer these dayboat scallops on some rosemary branches and grill them for dinner on Tuesday night. If you were in the New York Metro area on Tuesday night, you probably know why that didn’t happen – buckets and buckets of rain, not to mention temperatures more suited to mid-April than mid-June. It was great for the garden, not so great for my joints, and definitely not the kind of weather you want to linger outside in.

Nothing we had on hand was inspiring me, and I was bone tired anyway, so I tossed a salad, plated up some cured meats, cheeses and olives, and we had an indoor picnic. This is a fine meal in a pinch, but all of the good fresh ingredients we had in the fridge were haunting me. I didn’t want them to go bad before we could use them.

Tuesday was still chilly and overcast, but I was determined to do something with those scallops. I decided that if we couldn’t grill them, I’d sear them indoors with herbs and a little tomato butter. The chill in the air proved to be a plus as far as our side dish went. I sliced up some baby fennel and greenhouse-grown red bell peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, and a variety of tomatoes and layered them in a lightly-oiled baking dish, seasoning each layer with a generous sprinkling of salt and Herbes de Provence. I splashed about a quarter cup of white vermouth over the veggies, sprinkled some dry breadcrumbs on top, and added a light drizzle of olive oil, then baked the veggies in a 400 degree oven for about half an hour.

I was incredibly pleased with the texture of the vegetables – they were soft but not mushy, and their flavors were sweet and concentrated, accented nicely by the aromatic herbs. As well as we liked this as a side dish, I think it would also make for a great meatless entree.

We are heathens and don’t really celebrate the religious holidays we were raised with, so I hadn’t really thought about doing anything special for dinner on Easter Sunday, but Mike emailed me last Wednesday to tell me that on his swing through the Greenmarket on his lunch hour, he purchased a small ham from Tamarack Hollow, and he thought we could make it the centerpiece of our Sunday dinner.

I’ll be honest, I never liked ham growing up. I sort of hated it. I’m sure my mom will remember a family gathering long ago when a certain picky little sprout protested loudly at being served ham and was sent off to sit in solitude as punishment for being rude. My, how times have changed.

As I have gotten older my tastes have developed, and I’m now a fan of ham of all kinds. I actually looked forward to cooking and eating this one. I’ve recently started paying closer attention to Ina Garten‘s show on Food Network, and I happened to catch an episode when I was home sick one day recently where she doctored up a store-bought ham with a chutney and mustard glaze. It looked delicious, and I decided to do something similar, basting our ham for the last hour of cooking with a mixture of fig jam (about a cup) and sharp dijon mustard (about 2 tablespoons). It caramelized beautifully, and the flavors worked so well with the rich, smoky ham. We have a ton of ham left, but you won’t find me complaining… it’ll be great on a sandwich with some good grainy mustard and sourdough rye.

One thing I do recall fondly from the ham dinners of my youth were cheesy au gratin potatoes, crisp on top and creamy in the middle. I wanted to downscale a bit since it was just the two of us for dinner, so I decided to make just enough to go into the two small terracotta bakers we usually use for brunchy baked eggs. I sliced two medium russet potatoes, skins on, with my cheap mandoline slicer, rinsed them well, and boiled them until they were just tender. I drained them well and let them dry for a bit while I made a cheese sauce, spiked with some dried Herbes de Provence:

Cheese Sauce for Potato Gratin

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons unbleached flour
3/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tsp. dried Herbes de Provence
a pinch of Kosher salt
1/2 cup diced Raclette

Melt butter in a saucepan and whisk flour in until smooth. Cook for a few minutes then whisk in the milk and cream. Add herbs and salt and allow to cook over low heat until thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Add the cheese a bit at a time, whisking in, until thoroughly melted and smooth.

I tossed the potatoes with the cheese sauce, spooned them into the two buttered gratin dishes, added a bit more sliced Raclette cheese on top and baked them in a 400 degree oven until the sauce was bubbling and the potatoes were soft, about 35 minutes.

For our vegetable side, I wanted to go simple – one bunch of asparagus, trimmed, tossed with salt, pepper and olive oil, laid on a foil-lined baking sheet and roasted at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. It’s one of my favorite ways to prepare asparagus, and it couldn’t be easier.

If you know me, you know I’m not a huge fan of the sweets and desserts, but my boss gave me some black plums earlier in the week and I wanted to use them in something. Mike asked me to reserve a couple of them so he could experiment with them in a drink, but I had three left, so I decided to combine those with some of last summer’s frozen berries and make a crumble. This is actually the kind of dessert I really do enjoy from time to time, more tart than sweet, with a bit of texture, and great with a scoop of really good ice cream on the side.

Black Plum and Berry Crumble

For the filling:

3 black plums, pitted and sliced
1 cup each frozen blueberries and raspberries
1 tablespoon lemon zest
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon cardamom syrup*

For the topping:

1 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped raw almonds

Combine the filling ingredients in a bowl and toss gently to combine. Pour into a shallow baking dish and top with the oat/sugar/almond mixture. Dot the top with a bit of crumbled butter, and place into a 375 degree oven for 25-30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temp with freshly whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

*We used cardamom syrup because Mike made a batch for a cocktail he is working on; the recipe he used is from the excellent book The Art of the Bar. The flavor of the cardamom is lovely with the plums, but if you don’t have the syrup on hand or don’t care to make a batch, you can use a standard simple syrup.

Roast pork shoulder with caramelized fennel & onion; mashed potatoes with kale and olive oil. Dietsch cooked; I just plated. And ate. And swooned.