Mozzarella, Tomato, and Strawberry Salad

I've made, and eaten, many salads with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and basil, but this is the first time I've added strawberries to the mix. The addition of the berries is a fine idea, or a bonne idee, in Dorie's words.


Once you have the ingredients out on the counter, the preparation couldn't be easier.

Slice a half-pound ball of fresh mozzarella cheese in eight slices. Dorie says that buffalo mozzarella is the best, but it wasn't at my grocery store and I didn't feel like trekking around town to locate it.

Cut strawberries and tomatoes (I used cherry) into more or less equal pieces, and mix with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. Since I didn't have the suggested pink peppercorns, I used Hawaiian pink sea salt to give a little additional color.

Add some basil (now that it's summer, I can just pick some from the pots outside my back door), and there you have it.

I served this salad with salmon patties, made from a recipe in the latest Cook's Illustrated. This is also a simple recipe: put fresh salmon, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, panko breadcrumbs, lemon juice, parsley, salt, pepper, and a bit of cayenne in a food processor. Pulse a few times; shape into patties; dip both sides into more panko crumbs, and pan fry a few minutes on both sides.

I like trying new recipes so much that I usually don't get around to repeating them, even the successful ones. But this is a menu I could happily eat once a week forever.

Warm Weather Pot au Feu

Because I missed the cardamom rice pilaf (and maybe another recipe that I don't even remember), this is the second post in a row where a soft-boiled or poached egg adds protein and heft to what might otherwise seem a slim offering. In fact, this pot au feu, so abundant in vegetables, made me fear that this would be a dinner Jim would eat with a long-suffering expression on his face. "Where's the meat?" his long face would clearly say. Then he'd finish dinner, and go munch down a few pitiful saltine crackers.

When he came out to the kitchen to take some photographs, all he saw was piles of vegetables. He thinks vegetables are photogenic, so he didn't mind, but I saw him glancing at the ingredients, and then at the recipe. I'm sure he grumbled, "looks like healthy gruel," under his breath, but he soldiered on, taking pictures of the basil, tarragon, and parsley coulis, but still looking for evidence of meat or carbs.

He gave up hope when I added the spinach and told him I was done, except for ladling it in bowls. But then he spied the eggs in simmering water, and asked if I was going to add soft-boiled eggs again. (Again! Twice in 44 years, and he's talking like it's an everyday occurrence).

As it turned out, he was crazy about this dish. (As was I, but that wasn't much of a surprise--I like vegetables more than he does, and don't object to meals without meat). He said he really liked too the flavors, and that all the vegetables were cooked perfectly--not soggy, but not underdone either. He especially liked the dollops of herb coulis that I added along with the egg. And he's now a big fan of eggs in unexpected places.

Speaking of unexpected, I was recently given an "Awards Galore" blogging award by Allison, from French Whisk ("Vancouver Living and Dreaming of Paris"). I love her blog--Vancouver and Paris are two of my favorite cities. Thanks, Allison.

I'll pass the award on to a couple of my favorite bloggers:

Evil Cake Lady, AKA the more mundane Jennifer, who also lives in Vancouver,
Pink Nest (whose blogging adventures I've been following for years),
My cake-baking buddy Hanaâ, and
Jenn, who can do anything.

Bacon and Eggs and Asparagus Salad - French Fridays with Dorie

I'm almost a week behind, and not sure when I'm going to have time to make the rice that's scheduled for this Friday. But I wanted to write about this salad because it's so French: good, simple ingredients that are individually excellent and even better in combination. Dorie recommends this as a starter or a lunch dish, but, along with a hearty French roll, it was perfect for dinner.

Really easy to put together too--I cooked the asparagus, bacon, and eggs at the same time. Although Dorie is very firm about cooking the eggs for exactly six minutes, I like a seven-minute egg. So I disobeyed, and cooked mine for seven minutes, not allowing for the extra cooking time when the egg was rolling around in the bacon fat. That was fun, by the way.

At seven minutes, the eggs were a little over-cooked. If I'd cooked them for six minutes, they would have been perfect. I should have listened.

Spanish Meatballs and Pisto Manchego - Gutsy Cooks Selections

I picked the May menus for Gutsy Cooks, so I figure I really should make them. The tapas-style menu of meatballs and Pisto Manchego was scheduled for the first weekend in May, so I'm nearly two weeks behind. But I'm determined to make all the Gutsy and Dorie selections for May, even if I have to stay up until midnight on May 31.

I love meatballs. Any kind of meatballs. Oddly, one of the few phrases I know in Spanish is "No me gustan las albondigas," meaning "I don't like meatballs." But I do, so I've never had any occasion to use this phrase of rather limited usefulness. Still, these meatballs were a little odd. They're supposed to be made from ground veal and ground pork. Whole Foods didn't have ground veal, so I substituted ground turkey--otherwise, I pretty much stayed with the recipe. While the sauce looks lovely and brown in the book's photo, it actually was an unappetizing maroon; the only ingredients were onions and red wine. I added some beef broth to tone down the sauce, but it still looked a little purple.

If I made these meatballs again, I'd add some ground beef to the mix, increase the beef stock so that it and the wine would be about half and half. I'd also add a little tomato paste. They are meatballs, though, and me gustan las albondigas.

The Pisto Manchego, on the other hand, was perfect. The recipe called for two green and one red bell pepper, but I'm not a huge fan of green pepper, so I substituted a yellow and an orange pepper for them. This recipe is here. Pisto has its own Wikipedia entry. To be authentic, it should have green peppers, so my substitution made it Faux Pisto, but we Americans are always messing about with classic recipes. We can't help ourselves.

The vegetables are cooked, but they taste very fresh and delicious. The small amount of red wine vinegar, along with an equally small amount of sugar, work together to emphasize the vegetables' flavors; I added chopped basil instead of parsley, mostly because I put parsley in the meatballs and I wanted a different herbal flavor for the vegetables. It's a good thing we liked these vegetables because the recipe makes a mammoth potful. Fortunately, they can be eaten cold, at room temperature, or warm. They can be eaten as an appetizer, or for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We should be done with them by the time I make last week's recipes: Pad Thai and Mango and Papaya Salad.

TASTE-O-METER:
Jim: "I really like the vegetables. I'll give them a 9. I like the meatballs, too, but not as much. They still get an 8 though."
Marie: "I pretty much agree. The Pisto Manchego is very good, and versatile. I think a 9 is about right. I think I'll give the meatballs a 7.5 because they're not as good as I thought they would be."

Spinach and Bacon Quiche - French Fridays with Dorie

Pie is not my thing.  And a quiche is just a savory pie with a French name.  But I had to make something for my book club, so I decided I’d double the recipe and make two quiches for the hungry readers.  But I forgot I didn’t have two tart pans.  I also forgot that I broke my trusty Pyrex pie pan (I had only one) a few weeks ago and hadn’t replaced it yet.  Hint:  Do not set a hot glass pie pan on a granite countertop.  I do have a lovely Emile Henry deep dish pie pan—it was way too deep for this shallow quiche, but sometimes you have to make do with what you have.

I had no trouble making the filling, which was easy as you-know-what.  Because when I say that pie is not my thing, I really mean that crust is not my thing.  Every now and then I get a crust that’s flaky and delicious.  But mostly not.  But the filling was fun:  lightly cook the spinach, squeeze the bejesus out of it, and add it to sautéed onion and garlic.  (You’re supposed to chop the spinach, too, but I forgot to do that).

 

This mixture, plus the lovely, aromatic bacon, is set in the bottom of a pre-baked pie shell.  I didn’t take pictures of the pie crust making process, mostly because I was too absorbed in making the dough to think about taking pictures.  Pour cream and eggs over the vegetable/spinach  mixture, top with grated Parmesan, and it’s ready to go in the oven. 

 

You can see that there’s too much crust showing on the Emile Henry pan.  And the tart pan crust doesn’t look slickly professional.  It looks like it should come with a tag that says that the imperfections you see are a sign that this was made by hand. 

I got so busy getting dinner ready that I forgot to take pictures of the finished quiches.  (I realize that I forgot a lot of things, but in my defense, I’d like to say that I just got back from a two-week vacation in France and was still on French time.  You try making a quiche at 3:00 a.m. (body time) and see how successful you are). 

The book club loved the quiche filling, but most people left bits of crust on their plates.  If the pie crust is good, people eat it all.  If it’s not so good, it’s left on the plate.  But here’s a shot of one forlorn piece left in the Emile Henry pan.  I used Dorie’s all-purpose tart crust recipe on p. 498.  Since it’s Dorie’s go-to recipe, I assume it works for her.  I loved the quiche filling—it was just about perfect.  But next time, I’ll try another tart dough in my never-ending quest for the crust that gets eaten.  I guess I’d also better buy another pie pan.

Creamy Tarragon Chicken - a Gutsy Cooks Selection

I'm getting very far behind in both my French Fridays and Gutsy Cooks posts, and I'm going to be gone for a few weeks, so I'll just have to resign myself to being in permanent catch-up mode. But when I saw that Monica had added a chicken tarragon dish, I couldn't resist. I love creme fraiche, and I love fresh tarragon. The chicken is just a vehicle for the sauce.

Jim is not a big fan of skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts. He likes flattened cutlets--less chance of biting into bone or tendon. But I followed the recipe, got two large breasts from Whole Foods, and cut them in half.

I browned the shallots in the butter-oil mixture, even though the recipe just has them cooking in broth. Which sounds better, poached shallots or browned shallots? I thought so too.

After the chicken is browned, it simmers in a mixture of white wine and chicken broth for about 25 minutes. Then the chicken is plated, the sauce is reduced--and it's time to add creme fraiche and lots of chopped tarragon. If you don't like tarragon, this probably doesn't sound good.

Unlike sour cream, creme fraiche doesn't curdle when you use it in a sauce. It also tastes even better than either sour cream or whipping cream, so you've gotta love it. It's kind of expensive, which you don't gotta love.

And then the sauce is poured over the chicken, and dinner is served. You can make a salad, vegetable, potatoes, rice, salad--whatever strikes your fancy--during the 25 minutes the chicken is simmering in its sauce. I made steamed carrots and orzo--plenty of sauce to flavor the orzo as well as the chicken.

I could eat a cup of this sauce at a time. But I didn't. There are leftovers for my Saturday lunch, which makes me happy. You can get the recipe right here.

TASTE-O-METER:

Jim: "I'll give it a 7. I liked the sauce, but I thought the chicken was just okay. It didn't really pick up the flavors of the sauce, and it was too thick." (I knew he wouldn't like those fat chicken breasts with the bone still in).
Marie: "I can't believe you're just giving it a 7. It's an easy 9, maybe 9 and 1/2. The sauce is delicious!"

Garlicky Crumb-Coated Broccoli - French Fridays with Dorie

It's always good to have another broccoli recipe, but I'll have to say that this one didn't turn out to be as exceptional as I was hoping. Good, but not great. And, because it requires full-time attention just before serving, it may be difficult to work into a menu.

I started off with some fresh-looking organic broccoli. Sometimes "organic" seems worth the splurge; sometimes not. Here, despite the garlic breadcrumbs, I figured I'd want the best broccoli I could get. In the summer, I'd get it at the Farmers' Market. In April, I'll settle for the organic section at the grocery store.

A beautiful spring day in Minnesota. Even though there are still piles of snow and ice, it's now clear that they're clinging on but doomed. It was a good day to bring out the grill. I stopped at the meat market to get one lovely steak--and told Jim that he'd have to man the grill since I was getting the broccoli on the table. Nice to be able to use up some parsley that's not going to make it much longer and half a lemon that I found in a corner of the crisper drawer.

The smell of melting butter erases the scent of steamed broccoli. I know that broccoli is the healthier choice, but butter smells better.

The smell gets even better when three cloves of chopped garlic are added. I never paid the slightest bit of attention to the green "germ" in the garlic. Now, unfortunately, I know it should be removed. That extra step is kind of a pain, and I'm not completely sure that it makes a difference, but I try to be a good instruction follower. Broccoli is one of Jim's least favorite foods, but he was very taken with the smell of garlicky butter.

The lemon peel and parsley add fresh notes. Unfortunately, the crumbs do not adhere very well to the broccoli, so basically I put the broccoli on a platter and scrape the crumbs on top.

Jim was disappointed in the final dish. I think he'd been hoping for something transformative, and what he got, according to him, was lukewarm broccoli with crumbs on top. (If you make the broccoli a half-hour before serving, as I did, make sure to warm it up). I thought it was considerably better than that, but I didn't think it was the best possible broccoli recipe. The first grilled steak of the season? Now that was good.