Wednesday: Trouts and tarts

Rainbow trout baked with fennel, carrot and sweet peppers.

We improvised this bake to take advantage of the sweet, fatty flavor of upstate rainbow trout, which bears some resemblance to salmon.  (On the basis of that resemblance, we also added a generous amount of dill.)  We sauteed the vegetables with some onion before layering them over the fish in a casserole, and then baked it at 350F for about fifteen minutes.  We probably could have gotten away with a minute or two less - but this all depends on the size of the fish.

We also had a special dessert tonight: a red currant tart, cooked in the brand new ramekins we acquired thanks to Giselle's end-of-law-school Westlaw Points redemption extravaganza.

Wednesday: Frittata frittata bo bata banana fana fo fata fee fi mo mata....

Bell pepper and Parmesan frittata with wild rice.

Giselle has an evening class on Wednesdays this semester, so this is just a quick dinner which is easy to make with our frozen CSA peppers.

However, it is NOT easy to play "The Name Game" with the word "frittata"......just FYI.

Thursday: It's not easy finding greens

Bell pepper omelet with toast and spring greens salad.

This was just a quick weeknight meal using the greens we got at the Columbia farmer's market. For some reason mesclun is not available all winter, but it has been showing up at the markets lately.

Friday: This is your brain on tofu

Scrambled tofu with bell pepper, green beans and carrots.

By "scrambled tofu," we really just mean a stir fry with hard tofu crumbled in and cooked gently until warmed through. This is an easy way to use up odds and ends of vegetables you have lying around. In addition to a little ginger and garlic sauteed to start, we seasoned with some soy sauce at the end.

Tuesday: Blast from the Past

Quesadilla filled with black beans, Monterrey Jack cheese, bell peppers, and summer squash.

Over five years ago, when your humble bloggers were just learning how to cook, we considered a cheese quesadilla to be an impressive feat. Today we went back to our roots and made these quesadillas with veggies from our frozen CSA, plus black beans. Simple, but satisfying.

Thursday: Step right up!

Frittata with bell pepper, zucchini and yellow summer squash, and pecorino cheese.

The frittata was nice, but that's not what we're here to talk about today. Get a load of the eggs below:



Yes - on top you see an egg that had TWO YOLKS. Two yolks, people! We understand more or less how that happened, but it's not something we had ever seen before. Kind of disturbing. Ate it anyway, though.

Wednesday: Home again home again

Simple pasta with tomato and bell pepper sauce, topped with grated parmesan.

This was our first meal this winter made with ingredients from our frozen CSA, Winter Sun Farms. Both the tomato puree and chopped bell peppers came to us in cute little frozen packages. Otherwise, this is a pretty typical pasta sauce for us and a good way to ease back into the post-holiday routine.

Saturday Dinner: Frittata for Two

Red Russian kale-sweet pepper frittata.

Frittatas are less exotic than they sound - they're sort of like baked omelet/quiche hybrids. They don't require many ingredients, and can be filled with cheese and/or vegetables. (Most veggies should be sauteed or blanched before being added.)

For this frittata, we blanched the kale for a couple minutes and sauteed the peppers until soft. Then we mixed the veggies with six beaten eggs. Next, on the stove we heated a little oil in a skillet that can be put into the oven. Then we poured in the egg-vegetable mixture. We let it cook undisturbed on the stove for about ten minutes on medium-low heat. Finally, we transferred the entire skillet to an oven preheated to 350F. A frittata should bake for 10-20 minutes, until the top is no longer runny.

Monday: Kabocha-hominy stew

Chillied kabocha-hominy stew (flavored with sweet peppers, toasted cumin and cilantro).

This might be one of our all-time favorite recipes; we always make it around this time of year. Kabocha is a small, dark green Japanese winter squash varietal. It's actually pretty common - you might find it halved for sale in a supermarket. It's good for stew, since its cubes soften nicely but retain their shape instead of becoming mush.

Hominy, for those who aren't familiar, is corn kernels treated with lye. When mashed, corn treated this way becomes "masa harina," the flour that tortillas are made of. Whole canned hominy, for that reason, sort of has that "tortilla" taste. Both white and yellow hominy is available in many supermarkets. We used both in this recipe, but we generally prefer the flavor of the yellow kind.

After red onion is sauteed with a little oil, the cubes of squash are thrown in and sauteed until they begin to soften. Flour, cayenne and cumin seeds are then added and stirred to coat the squash. Finally, hominy and broth are added, and the stew simmers for a while - the flour thickens it so that the minced pepper added at the end is suspended throughout. The final step is a cilantro garnish. It's pretty foolproof, but comes out looking (and tasting!) like restaurant food.

Tuesday: Tofu Jalfrezi

Tofu jalfrezi (tofu with bell peppers and tomatoes).

This is another Mahanandi recipe. It might be more traditionally made with paneer (the soft Indian cheese), but in a lot of Indian recipes, tofu actually makes an admirably good substitute for paneer. We sometimes make saag tofu when the idea of making paneer from scratch feels too daunting.

Sunday night: Mexican dinner party

Not pictured: Richard

After enjoying the purslane with potatoes in green sauce that we made last week, we decided that we needed to make the most of tomatillos while they were in season. This led to the decision to re-make a delicious roasted tomatillo salsa that we first made last summer. But of course, salsa needs something to go on, so we decided to make chiles rellenos (stuffed poblano chilies). This called for making rice - which of course must be yellow rice, which we didn't have but decided we could make - and of course beans. That inspired us to try out the "frijoles borrachos" (drunken beans) recipe we'd been mulling over for quite a while. ....Needless to say, partway into this ambitious endeavor we realized it was time to have an impromptu dinner party.

Frijoles borrachos are beans slow-cooked with Mexican beer, along with other seasonings. We used some black beans that we got from our CSA last winter but never quite got around to:



The tomatillos were a multicolored bunch - mostly green, but with some yellows and purples. For the salsa, they're put under the broiler until the skins are blackened (this can also be done in a cast-iron skillet), then skinned and blended with jalapenos, onion, and garlic (all blackened as well). Roasting brings out a completely different flavor from tomatillos than does boiling, as in the purslane dish we made last week.



Here are the chiles rellenos being....relleno'd:



Ok, our dinner involved a lot of blackening - these were blackened and skinned as well, then de-seeded and de-veined, and stuffed with cheese for a final bake. Lizz's hands burned for the next 24 hours from touching the chili veins, but it was worth it.



Once we had invited people over, we realized it would probably be a good idea to have a drink to serve them. Ambitiously, we decided to make horchata, the delicious Mexican rice drink. The recipe we followed called for pulverizing some rice, then soaking it in water with a stick of cinnamon, and then blending it in several stages while adding water. Finally it gets strained and sugar is added to sweeten. It came out pretty well, although probably a finer mesh strainer would have given it a better texture.

Meanwhile the salsa and beans simmered away:



Though we used to buy it in premixed packets, yellow rice isn't honestly too hard to make: you start with white rice and cook it with a generous pinch of saffron, some cumin, some garlic powder (if you have or like garlic powder), and a coloring agent - usually annato seeds, but turmeric works too.



Our friends Manasi and Richard kindly brought over a batch of freshly-made guacamole, as you can see here:



It was quite a spread...if we do say so ourselves.

Saturday lunch: First corn of the year

Today's lunch: leftover purslane with potatoes in green sauce, sweet corn on the cob, raw orange pepper with balsamic vinaigrette, and iced jasmine-green tea.

It's a little early yet for corn, but we thought it'd go well with the rest of last night's dish.


Oh sweet corn, it's not your fault that your evil commodity cousin is taking over the world

Saturday picnic lunch

A friend of ours was dogsitting, so we headed out to Morningside Park today for some idyllic doggie picnic time. The sandwiches we brought were made with fresh bread from the greenmarket, Vivace Bambino cheese, grainy mustard, lemon cukes, and purple radish sprouts.

The bean salad incorporated the first sweet peppers we've bought this year:



Lemon cukes, besides being yellow and lemon-shaped, do actually taste a bit less grassy and more lemon-like than an average cucumber. They have a nice dense consistency, whiteish flesh, and their seeds are surrounded by neon green jelly. Here is a lemon cuke looming ominously before the peppers:



Our white bean salad included the diced sweet peppers, minced shallot, garlic scapes, cilantro, parsley, olive oil, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice.