Provencal Soup

I made the soup last week and turned into a vegetable the next morning! That was some serious green. Thankfully it wasn't just good for me, but it tasted good too! It was a big hit with the whole family and it was so exciting to see Sahana ingest so many vegetables in one sitting. Otherwise it's pretty much only frozen peas, which she is obsessed with! We polished the whole recipe off in a couple of days between us and will definitely make it again. Plus so nice to use my garden rainbow chard! You should plant some, it looks so pretty while it grows. My tomatoes, a pepper and some dill went in this weekend too!

This Week's Choice

I've been eyeing the Indonesian Lamb Satay with Spicy Peanut Sauce for a while. I tentatively pick that, but I'm going to see expensive lamb is.

Three-Lemon Chicken

I also forgot to take a picture!! We made the chicken over the weekend. It was my first time making a whole chicken and I was happy my mom was here to guide me along. It wasn't hard and I'm sure I could have figured it out myself, but it was nice to have someone looking over my shoulder to make sure I didn't screw the whole thing up. We made some grilled artichokes to go with it. It was delicious - it stayed very moist and the flavors were excellent. I really liked the freshness of the lemon, especially mixed with the rosemary and the roasted garlic. I didn't have any string to tie the bird up, but it still turned out really moist. My only complaint was that it was kind of a pain to roast the garlic first and then make the rest of the recipe. I roasted the garlic in the oven, rather than on the grill. Now we have lots of leftovers and there's lots of different things to do with it. Today I made a lettuce wrap with peppers, chicken and pesto and it was delish!

Tandoori Tofu

I forgot to take a picture of this as well. I don't know what my problem is, especially since I have a snazzy new little camera I'm all excited about. . .
So, I was late coming home from a baby shower, and Dan was hungry, so he decided to be pro-active about starting dinner. While this was very welcome, it caused a bit of a snafu. He recalled me saying we were having tandoori tofu, so he looked up tandoori in the Big Book of Grilling and made a marinade. However, he made the marinade for the tandoori chicken, not the beef! However, the marinades are very similar. I can't recall all the differences, but I know the chicken one lacked jalapeno. Whatever. . .close enough.
He drained the tofu (pressed it with the heavy cast iron skillet on the splatter screen over a casserole dish to collect the water), then marinated it for about an hour (at least). We did make the lentil salad that accompanied the beef recipe. I had to start that after I got home, so I think the tofu actually marinated for over an hour. We then simply threw the tofu on skewers and grilled it over direct heat. The tofu did stick to the grill a little, so next time we'll need to grease the grill or use a non-stick grate. This was the first time we had cooked tofu on the grill. It was really good. The tofu really absorbed the flavor of the marinade well. It also clung to the tofu well during grilling, resulting in a nice char on the outside of the cubes. I was really pleased with how it came out. We will definitely try this again. The lentil salad was nice. Not the most authentic Indian flavors, but the balsamic vinegar gave the lentils a nice sweetness that countered the spiciness of the tofu well.

Yummy Roast Chicken

I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of the chicken when it came off the grill! It was so pretty with the lemons on top. Oh well, it pretty much looked like the picture in the book, so that will have to do. Except that the picture in the book has the chicken platter decorated with oregano (or marjoram), when there is only rosemary in the recipe. That annoys me. It's not like rosemary is a hard ingredient to come by, why use the clearly wrong herb when showing how the recipe should turn out???
Anyway, back to our experience with the chicken. We made this Friday night, which is good, b/c this is not a quick recipe. I roasted the garlic in the oven right when I got home, so that sped things up a bit, but Dan and I still had the time to polish off a bottle of wine while sitting on the deck waiting for the chicken to cook. The smells coming from the grill were so wonderful, we were starving by the time the bird was finished. It was worth the wait though. I don't think I have ever had such a moist piece of chicken! The flavor of the roasted garlic paste under the skin really permeated the meat well, too. I think we'll make this again, when we have the time to spare, and it is definitely a contender for the dinner party on Saturday.

We had Roasted Zucchini and Radishes as a side dish. I had a couple bunches of radishes languishing in the crisper from the past few CSA shares. They are not my favorite vegetable, so I wasn't sure how to prepare them. I threw the radishes and zucchini on the grill, with a quite a bit less oil than the recipe called for, in a foil packet for half and hour on direct heat. This tempered the peppery bite of the radishes really well. I'll make this again when faced with a plethora of radishes.

Fabulous Soup

Here's the recipe for Provençal Vegetable Soup (Soupe au Pistou), the soup I made last week. I think you should save it for a day with a slight chill in the air and try it out. It is so good.

I don't really know many chard recipes. I actually don't cook with chard very much, I don't think the CSA farm grows it, and I usually end up getting kale or spinach when I shop for greens. It is delicious simply wilted in garlic and olive oil, though. I was reading recently that your chard crop can last all year - just take the outer leaves off - b/c it won't bolt. That's awesome. I'll have to plant some!

Easy Yummy Chicken

We both liked the Tandoori marinade on the chicken. It wasn't mind-blowing, but it was really good and will definitely be made again. We had it with some garlic naan that we got at TJ's (do you still not have a TJ's down there?!), some cukes, and some yogurt. I really wish I would have had some cilantro on hand, because that cilantro yogurt from Moosewood would have been great with it. But you could do a lot with this, add it to salads, serve it as an appetizer, or as a main meal. I forgot to take a photo.

This week's pick

I pick Three-Lemon Chicken (pg 233) this week. I'm having a big dinner party next weekend and I'm thinking of roasting whole chickens on the grill since it's an inexpensive way to feed many people well. But I'd like to test out the recipe first. If I'm feeling adventurous, I may make Strawberries Balsamico (pg 383) for dessert since I got two quarts of strawberries from the CSA this weekend.

Grill = Tandoor

I'm picking Tandoori Beef with Lentil Salad. But I'm making chicken with the marinade and not making the lentil salad. We have little bits of all sorts of Indian food leftover but not enough for a meal, so I figure this will round it out and hopefully leave some leftovers for a nice salad for lunch tomorrow!

I never could find a recipe in either Moosewood or the Big Book of Grilling that would help me use up some excess veggies from the CSA. Thankfully, I got my new issue of Gourmet last week and found a great soup that allowed me to throw a bunch of greens and root veg into it. Unfortunately, the recipe isn't up on Epicurious yet. It was delicious. Very fresh tasting. The recipe called for potatoes and swiss chard, but I used my turnips in addition to the potatoes and turnip greens and beet greens in place of the swiss chard.
I'll keep an eye out for the recipe and post it when they publish it online. Although you have trouble getting in soup-mood in San Diego, it is definitely worth making.
I get my next CSA share tomorrow, so I will pick a recipe for this week then.

This week's pick??

We went camping over Easter weekend and I was in charge of Saturday dinner. I wanted to make lamb kebabs in honor of Easter and was hopeful that our grilling book would allow me to pick a recipe that would kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately there wasn't an appropriate recipe in our book for a Eastery lamb marinade. I found a good recipe in my other grilling book - The Barbecue Bible. I did make a yogurt sauce from the lamb pita recipe in our book . . .I doubt that counts as my pick though. . . So I still haven't picked anything for this week. I wish there was something with collards that I could throw on the grill. I have a ton of them from the past two week's CSA shares. I'm likely not cooking at home until Friday at the earliest, so I'm not sure I'll be able to pick a grilling recipe and use up veggies from the CSA. I may pick something out of Moosewood though.
That pork looks fabulous. I'd definitely like to make it. I, unfortunately, don't happen to have a pork shoulder hanging around in my freezer. . .I'll try to get to it this weekend. Maybe I can make it on Sunday for band practice. . .
Anyway, that's what's happening on this coast. I'll try to find a recipe that uses all the veggies in my fridge and is from one of our books in the next couple days.

Rating System

I've added some rating labels, because I've been having a hard time remembering what I liked enough to make again! It's up to you whether or not you want to use them. They are: five star, add it to the routine, may make again, not so much.

Happy Hubby

Rather than a picture of a huge hunk of meat, I think a better descriptive image of this week's dish is Anshul's face. because he was so darn excited about how good it was. But just in case you want to see the meat, I'll include that too. This was so freakin' good! We had a pork shoulder that we needed to use, it's been in our freezer a while. It ended up being two pieces and we cooked it like that and didn't roll it or tie it. Anshul didn't think it mattered, and I had no idea. The rub smelled so good when we were putting it on and it tasted even better. We couldn't have imagined that it could taste any better by putting it into the salsa, but it did! We kind of mashed it around in the sauce so that it had the texture of pulled pork and it tasted so amazing in the burrito. We used whole wheat flour tortillas. I made some black beans instead of using refried beans - sauteed them with cumin and garlic and a little jalepeno and then mashed them a bit. I also served it with sour cream, mixed greens, fresh cilantro and tomatoes and skipped the cheese. I doubt you could taste it anyway with the strong flavor of the pork. It looks kind of gross when you refrigerate it, but tastes so good as leftovers. At the end of our meal, Anshul was totally distressed that we haven't slow-cooked anything on the grill up until now. "We've had it for two years and have only used it to grill vegetables!!" he yelled in despair. I guess there will be more pork on our agenda.

This Week's Pick

I choose Sonora-Style Green Chile Pork Burritos. Full disclosure: we made this last week and it is delish. If you don't feel like making that much pork, you could use the rub on another cut, or on another type of meat. The rub is fantastic, but the recipe itself is really really good and really really good as leftovers if you're in a pork-y mood!

Thai Yellowfin

I made Thai yellowfin, as opposed to Thai albacore b/c that was what was available. We had it over brown jasmine rice with a Thai influenced carrot salad with some cucumbers mixed in. I agree that the marinades in this book are so simple, yet impart a lot of flavor quickly. Good thing, b/c making this dish was a fiasco. We ran out of gas right in the middle of cooking the fish, so I fired up the cast iron grill pan on the stove, except it got too hot, or the fish had already cooked more than we thought, b/c by the time I sliced it to plate it up it was only slightly pink in the center. I feel so guilty over-cooking such a beautiful piece of fish, but it still tasted great, mostly from the great flavor the marinade gave the fish. I agree that the butter sauce wasn't really necessary, but it did add a little moisture to the slightly dry fish and rice. I did add some extra ginger and soy sauce, along with some lime zest, to the butter sauce, per your suggestion. I imagine that it just tasted like salty melted butter without that extra spice.

The carrot salad when wonderfully with the fish. I made a vinaigrette that had sweet Thai chili-garlic sauce, lime juice, rice wine vinegar and some olive oil. I tossed that with grated carrots, thinly sliced English cucumber, parsley and some mint. The fish with a bit of carrot salad made and excellent bite. I'm so glad we tried the carrot salad in Moosewood, it is such a simple, versatile and yummy dish! I made a big batch of it up for camping this weekend, too.

Mahi Mahi

Ahh, I've got to stop writing reviews so long after making dishes!! I think I can remember the details on this though b/c it was so tasty. So, I had already been planning on making a grilled Mahi with a mango salsa before I picked this dish. I had just finished shopping and had found good prices on mahi and mangoes (although my "deal" of $1 each is pitiful compared to your excellent find a couple weeks ago. . .). Anyway, I decided to check to see if our new cookbook had any mahi and mango recipes in it, and lo and behold, there was one very similar to what I wanted to make! Since I had already been shopping I had to make a few minor substitutions. In the marinade I used some vermouth and a bit of rice wine vinegar in place of the sake and for the salsa I used some crushed red pepper in place of the jalepeno. I thought the marinade was really nice without overpowering the nice sweet/coconuty flavor of the mahi. I was impressed with the grilling directions for the fish, they resulted in a perfectly cooked, moist fish. The salsa was fabulous. We'll definitely make this again. We've been eating a varaiation of this meal for years already.
I made this with the Pan-Asian Slaw from the Moosewood book. However, I didn't have Asian slaw mix, so I just shredded some cabbage I had and a couple carrots and mixed it with the rest of the ingredients. I topped it with some toasted sesame seeds. It went very nicely with the rest of the meal.

Teriyaki Convert

I've never been a huge fan of teriyaki, not anti, just not my fave, but I think the problem is that every time I've had it, it's been a piece of chicken drenched in gloppy sauce. But this fish was so good! I could still taste the fish and the sauce had great flavor. I served it over some greens dressed with my fave Thai Sesame Lime dressing, then topped with the mango salsa. Then I had some grilled bell peppers and avocado around the side. It was such a nice mix of flavors. The tangy salsa, the flavorful fish, the sweet peppers. I've made a different mango salsa before and I was a little hesitant that this would be as good, but it was delish! Mmmm... one of the best meals I've had as of late. I like how easy the recipes are in this book so far - the marinades only take a couple of minutes to throw together.

Tuna

We loved the Thai Albacore! The fish itself was great and the marinade gave it very good flavor. I could have done without the butter sauce - it pretty much just tasted like butter and while butter tastes good, it wasn't really worth it. A sauce with more ginger and soy sauce flavor would be a nice compliment. I made an arugula salad with mango, peppers, and red onions and a Thai Sesame Lime dressing that I have. Yum! I also made some grain mix that I got at TJ's which includes Israeli couscous, dried garbanzos and some other things that sound like they would be good for you. I liked it alot and thought it was a nice texture with the fish. Anshul hates to have dry grains, so he wasn't such a fan until he poured the remaining butter sauce over it and then it tasted delish (wonder why....). It was a great meal and made me excited for the upcoming ones! I'm still a little hesitant on cooking on the grill - I feel like I always overcook, but hopefully a little practice will help.

On to the next book...

I pick Thai Albacore with Soy-Ginger Butter. I also made it last week but haven't written it up yet! Guess that gives us both a head start as we resume, hopefully it will help. ;)

This weeks pick

This week I pick Grilled Teriyaki Mahi Mahi with Mango Salsa from our new cookbook - Weber's Big Book of Grilling - with Asian Cabbage Coleslaw from Moosewood Simple Suppers. In fact, I have already made this meal, but have been too lazy to post my review. I will do that in the very near future.

A Vague Memory of Peanut Sauce

Once upon a time, I made a delicious peanut sauce, so altering the recipe as to barely recognize it. I'll try to recapture it, because it turned out really good, but there may be an ingredient or two missing, since it was totally improvised with the assistance of my sous chef. I decided I wanted to make the Southeast Asian version, so I substituted red curry paste for the chili garlic paste and fish sauce for the soy sauce, and coconut milk for the water. On first taste it was pretty nasty. I then added soy sauce thinking that might have been a critical component. Then some chicken broth because it was kind of thick with the coconut milk. A little more peanut butter. Then some chili garlic paste because it still needed more kick. Then some lime juice because it needed some acidity. It still tasted kind of gross. Anshul suggested we heat it up. I sauteed chicken first, heated up the sauce and then mixed them together. I steamed broccoli and green beans and made some brown rice. I served it with brown rice, then veggies, then the saucy chicken on top. It was fantastic! The vegetables were nice and crisp, but there was plenty of sauce to mix with them. It was exactly like our favorite Panang Curry that we get at Thai restaurants. Mmm... if only I could replicate it again! I've even lost the picture of it!

Southwestern Salad

I made the Southwestern Black Bean salad last night. I added mango (3 for $1 at the grocery store!) and red pepper, and some Chipotle pepper chicken sausage because getting Anshul to eat a salad for dinner is hard enough even if it has meat in it, and near impossible if it doesn't. I didn't add the olives or the cheese. It came out well. An easy, healthy, fresh tasting salad that I would definitely make again. It didn't seem like brain science, but a good reminder of what tastes good together. The dressing was good, nice and easy. I have no idea why the photo is coming up sideways.