Last Night’s Dinner

Well, my first week at my new gig is behind me. It was a good one, though exhausting, and I am woefully behind on the internets. I have, unfortunately, had NO time to blog, but here’s a quick recap of what we ate this week:

Monday’s dinner was a light and simple combination of nutty purple jasmine rice, some Rancho Gordo flageolet beans which I had pre-soaked the night before, some frozen peas and favas, asparagus, thinly sliced tiny green onions, dill and a good crumbling of Narragansett Salty Sea, a delicious feta-style cheese.

I dressed it all in a lemon vinaigrette, and while I would have preferred to have fresh peas and favas, it was a really satisfying combination of flavors and textures.

Mike was responsible for Tuesday’s meal, a version of Suzanne Goin’s wild salmon salad with roasted beets, potato and egg using arctic char in place of the salmon. This was a colorful, beautiful dish, and I always love tucking into a big salad filled with lots of tasty things.

Wednesday’s dinner was a team effort, with Mike putting together Mario Batali’s tuna and ricotta polpette (from Molto Italiano) during the day, which I breaded and fried when I got home. I also whipped up a batch of basic tomato sauce to serve with them. These little fritters were fantastic - light, creamy in the center and crisp and golden outside. It was hard to stop eating them!

We dined out on Thursday, at a little place called Oak, and to round out the week we did something that still feels a little strange:

We ordered a pizza. Not as good as homemade, but sometimes it’s nice to let someone else do the cooking.

I stopped off at Eno and brought home a really nice wine to go with the pizza, as well as this lovely bottle of Champagne - a great way to ring in the long weekend.

We’re off on food safari soon, and hope to bring home lots of goodies for the days ahead. Hope you’ve got some delicious things planned!

I’ve admitted in the past that I have a secret love for canned soup casseroles, but it has been years since I’ve made one at home because I just don’t cook that way anymore. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’ve missed them, and from time to time, I think about how I might put one together without adding a can or three of that sodium-laden, over-processed cream-of-whatever to the mix.

Dinners this week have been largely unplanned. All of the energy I would normally have put toward sketching out a meal plan for the week has been directed elsewhere: to making lists, making plans, making arrangements and sorting out the numbers in preparation for our move. And again, there is the matter of clearing the freezer and pantry, paring things down so we can start fresh at our new home.

By the time lunch rolled around yesterday, I was in the unfamiliar (for me) position of still not knowing what I was going to cook for dinner. We are, as you can imagine, trying to be particularly thrifty these days so going out wasn’t really an option, and though I could have had Mike stop and pick up something fresh to cook up, that really goes against the whole culling thing that we’re trying to do. So I thought back to the cupboards, fridge and freezer, and inspiration struck: I had half a brick of cream cheese left over from Wednesday night’s stuffed chicken breasts, a couple of cans of good tuna on the shelves, and the last of the peas I shelled, blanched and froze last summer. The cream cheese, when mixed into a basic béchamel sauce, might just work as the base for a tuna noodle casserole…

It did work, and beautifully, making a thick, creamy and flavorful sauce to bind the cooked pasta, fresh peas, drained and chunked tuna and some mushrooms which I had chopped and sautéed until golden with shallot, sherry and dried marjoram. As with all good canned soup casseroles, this one got a cheesy, crisp topping of grated parm and dried breadcrumbs, which baked to a golden crust. This was the comfort food of my youth elevated to a new (guilt-free) level, and I can’t wait to play with future variations.

What do you do when time, money and inspiration are in limited supply, but you still need to get dinner on the table? Fall back on an old standby, of course.

This is about as simple as it gets - I rubbed a couple of tuna steaks down with a mixture of chopped fresh garlic and Herbes de Provence, seasoned them with salt and poured over a healthy amount of olive oil, then grilled them over hardwood for about five minutes per side. I served them with a dollop of homemade lemon pesto (sans cheese) and a salad of arugula, radish, fresh corn and tomatoes. Light, bright and delicious - this was everything I want in a late summer supper.

I’m loving the warmer weather, but yesterday was oppressively sticky. Even with a window, our kitchen tends to trap heat, so I didn’t want to spend any more time over a hot stove than was absolutely necessary. Luckily, we had all of the necessary ingredients on hand for me to throw together one of my favorite assembled meals – Salad Nicoise.

When I’m blanching vegetables for a dish, I like to do more than I’ll need, dry the extras well and freeze them. I had a little bag of haricots verts in the freezer from this dish, and when I got home from work I placed them into a bowl of warm water to thaw.

The extent of my actual cooking was boiling about a dozen small fingerling potatoes until tender, and hard boiling a couple of eggs; of course, if you have leftover boiled potatoes and/or hard boiled eggs on hand, you’ve got that much less to do.

While my two small pots boiled away, I washed and spun dry a mixture of young lettuces from Yuno’s Farm and set them aside while I prepared a super easy garlicky vinaigrette: mash one clove of garlic into a paste and place it into a mason jar; add 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, about 1/4 cup of champagne vinegar, salt and pepper, then screw on the lid and shake. Add 1 tablespoon each chopped fresh parsley and tarragon and 1-2 tablespoons of small capers, and shake again. Add 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil and shake for a final time.

When the potatoes are fork-tender, drain them, cut them in half and set them in a small bowl. Pour about 1/3 of the dressing over them and gently toss. Pour the remaining dressing into the bottom of a large salad bowl, place your salad greens on top and toss gently with your (clean!) hands.

Mound the dressed greens on dinner plates; top each with a handful of the dressed potatoes, 8 oz. of good-quality oil-packed tuna (drained), a few anchovy filets, haricots verts, marinated artichoke hearts, olives, tomato wedges, and a halved or quartered hard boiled egg. Pour yourself a lightly chilled glass of rose, and enjoy.

The beauty of having a well-stocked pantry is being able to change things up at the last minute if necessary and still get something good on the table. Our original plan, since Mike and I both had Monday off from work and could spend a bit more time cooking, was to do a series of New Orleans inspired dishes and nosh all day long. After running around in the cold all morning, then coming home and making three and a half quarts of homemade chicken stock, I was tired and achy, and the last thing I wanted to do was prepare an involved meal. We scrapped our original plan and decided to go simple.

One of our favorite pantry staple meals is a pasta dish inspired by Giada De Laurentiis’ Fusilli with Tuna and Tomato Sauce. Her recipe provides a good jumping off point, but I like to add a little more kick to it with chile flakes and extra capers.

I got a big pot of water boiling for the pasta, and then got to work on the sauce. I didn’t have any of my basic tomato sauce on hand, so I had to build a quick version first. I sauteed a chopped shallot in some olive oil, then added half a can of whole peeled San Marzanos with their juice and crushed them with a potato masher. I added a splash of white wine, some dried marjoram and chile flakes, and seasoned the sauce with kosher salt.

We always have jars of oil-packed Italian tuna on hand, so I pulled the meat from one jar (leaving behind the oil) and added it to the sauce, breaking it up a bit with a fork. I added about 1/4 cup of nonpareil capers and a generous grating of lemon zest, and let it simmer away while my cavatappi cooked (I used half a box). When the pasta was just short of al dente, I added a small ladleful of the pasta water to the sauce, then added the pasta right into the sauce and tossed it through. Once the pasta had finished cooking in the sauce, I spooned it into serving bowls and finished it with some fresh flat-leaf parsley and more lemon zest.

This dish has such a wonderful combination of flavors, and you just can’t beat a recipe that you can put together from things you’ve always got on hand, in just about half an hour.

Wine Note: We drank Borgo Nuovo Nero d’Avola, which went really nicely with the meaty tuna, spicy chiles and hit of citrus in this dish.