Soup and salad night

I'm a couple of days late with this post but very happy to report that nearly half of the veggies and herbs in Thursday night's soup and salad dinner came from the backyard!  From the store, a big handful of baby spinach, an onion, a tomato and about eight red baby potatoes.  Oh, and feta cheese and lemon juice.  From the garden, a bunch of radish tops, three radishes, two cucumbers, about fifteen oregano leaves, seven or eight basil leaves and another seven or eight lemon balm leaves. 

I'd been looking forward to making this radish greens soup for a while but wanted to wait until I already had the potato and onion before pulling up the one bunch of radish greens remaining.  The radishes were mostly non-performers this time due to overwatering (go figure - they got as much water as the first bunch that did fine), but the greens were all perfectly usable.  So, when Steve brought home the potatoes and onion one day this week, I decided that the moment had arrived and I went to it, substituting veggie broth for the chicken broth.  Also, earlier in the week he had picked a cucumber or two along with the squash and zucchini that are going off gangbusters in the garden, so I figured that a tomato and some fresh herbs and a homemade Greek lemon-oil dressing were all that I'd need to complete a Greek cucumber salad like the one featured here.

I used said handful of spinach because the recipe called for two bunches of radish greens and I only had the one.  Plus, the spinach in the fridge wasn't getting any younger, and I knew that I wanted to use up all eight of the baby red potatoes because I didn't have any other ideas for them and I wanted to soup to be equally potato-y and green or slightly in favor of the greens, which necessitated supplementation of the radish greens. 

The end result  A nice, light dinner for a hot evening!

It's going to be another hot one.  Please do a rain dance for veggie gardens across the Southeast today!

Vegetable soup

OK, I'm gonna say it - this was nothing special; just a use-stuff-up recipe.  I still had most of the potatoes, corn, pink-eyed peas, tomatoes and banana peppers that I received in my most recent Pinckney's stash before Thursday rolled around - and I wanted to ensure that I had something vegetarian for myself on the days when I didn't want any meat or dairy.

2 tbsp canola oil
3 mild banana peppers, gutted and diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
6 cups vegetable broth
1 lb fresh pink-eyed peas, rinsed
4 new potatoes, peeled and diced
1 ear of corn, cooked
2 large tomatoes, peeled and diced
1 branch fresh rosemary
1 branch fresh thyme
6 basil leaves, torn
pepper to taste

In an 8 qt pot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the banana peppers and saute until softened, about 3-5 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring broth to a boil in a separate pot. Once it has boiled, add to the pot with the peppers along with the peas and diced potatoes. Cover and simmer 15 minutes.

Remove the husk from the corn and cut the corn off the cob with a serrated knife. Add corn, tomatoes and herbs to the pot, cover and simmer another 30 minutes. Check seasoning and add pepper to taste.

If I make this again, I might make it heartier by using less broth.  (Chris Rock: 'cuz I sho' is hungry!)  Since the potatoes were diced, less liquid was needed to soften them up.  One pleasant surprise, was that most of the thyme fell off the branches while the soup cooked, so when I finally had some on Tuesday, I just had to fish the thyme and rosemary out of the pot and toss them in the compost bin, and the rest I packed up as leftovers.

Calderade

Another Mediterranean recipe from the Portugal chapter of La cuisine autour de la méditerranée.  It would have been nice to include the onions that are mentioned in the book version, but I had no onions and an oversupply of potatoes, plus some nice, ripe tomatoes (thanks Joyce!) and pretty much everything else this recipe called for:


1/2 cup olive oil
6-7 medium new potatoes, peeled and cut into rounds about 1/3 inch thick
1 cup dry white wine
salt and cayenne pepper
2 large, ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
5-6 small tilapia filets
1 branch worth of chopped fresh rosemary
1 branch of fresh thyme

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
In a 10 X 14 inch baking pan, add the olive oil and place in oven for 10 minutes. Remove and add layers of potatoes, seasoning each layer with salt and cayenne pepper. (Should end up with 3 layers.) Bake layers of potatoes for about 45 minutes or until fork-tender. Remove, add tilapia in one layer and cover with tomatoes, thyme and rosemary. Bake another 15 minutes or until tilapia flakes with a fork. Serve with white wine.

This made a great dinner last night, and I really enjoyed the leftovers for lunch today! To my surprise, we barely registered the cayenne; maybe it joined with the olive oil and wine in the bottom of the casserole? Also, the original recipe called for cod or another type of fish that is normally sliced thicker than tilapia and said to bake the whole thing for an hour. I went with the tilapia just because we already had it, adding it later so that it would not have time to dry out in the oven.

Completely unrelated, but in case anyone out there is wondering why the emphasis on healthy food, and why I haven't yet fried a single potato (or any other food items in my house) despite the steady supply...well, I haven't been able to run lately because I came away from a half-marathon in April with an IT band injury that's been slow to heal - in part because I put off going to see Dr. Renick. In the meantime, I've been very careful of what I eat so as not to puff up while waiting to start running again. But on Sunday morning, I managed to run for ten whole minutes after walking 20, cleaned house afterward and the IT band still feels OK!

Frogmore Stew!

Made this Sunday night.  It seemed like an obvious choice because of the potatoes and corn that came in last week’s Pinckney's stash along with the packages of shrimp and (turkey) smoked sausage in the freezer and my never-ending supply of spices and fresh herbs. The red potatoes, corn, smoked sausage and shrimp are all standard across the recipes that I found online. I sort-of went with this recipe because of its flexibility and used the following:



6 cloves garlic, chopped
4 red cayenne peppers, cut in half lengthwise
2 tsp ground Mexican oregano
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp salt
6 small new potatoes, washed (larger ones cut in half)
3 ears of corn, husked and cut in half
1 lb. turkey smoked sausage, sliced every 2 inches
1 lb. frozen shrimp

Bring 5-6 quarts of water to boil, add spices and potatoes and boil for 20 minutes or until potatoes are fork-tender. Add smoked sausage and corn and boil another 10 minutes. Add shrimp, turn off heat, cover until shrimp have cooked through or warmed up, about 5-8 minutes. Drain and serve.

Traditionally, you’re supposed to pour the contents of the pot onto a table top covered with newspaper and let everyone eat with their hands. I wasn’t about to disgrace the antique dining table we inherited last year from

Steve’s aunt in that manner, but I did spread out a few pages from the Free Times for the photo. (Yep, it’s the article about Alvin Greene, “The Manning-Churian Candidate.”)

The cayennes were from a co-worker whose definition of “hot” differs dramatically from mine. Had I known that they would taste more like red poblanos, I would have added some cayenne or Yucateco green habanero sauce to the mix. Also, there are different spice preferences along the coastal areas of the Southeast. If I ever make this again, I think that, rather than make up my own seasoning blend (although this wasn’t bad), I’ll go with a sachet of Old Bay crab boil. I’ve made some of my best gumbo with it before and would expect it to do just as well in a Frogmore Stew. Enjoy!

Shrimp Scampi and a lot of hearty Greek-style goodness

After voting in the SC primary on Tuesday, the pressure was on to find a use for two turnips, one bunch of kale and about a pound of string beans. I've also had a bag of new potatoes sitting around (courtesy of an Amsa Yoga regular who gave them away on Memorial Day) that I at least needed to think about using up. Since Steve likes food with a face in at least one meal a day, I had to think of a way to work that in and avoid overwhelming him with veggie side dishes. So, instead of making separate dishes out of turnips, potatoes, string beans and kale, I found combinations that brought the side dish count down to two. The result appears above, and here's how I got there (in roughly this order):

Peloponnesos-style potatoes and green beans*:
3 tbsp Smart Balance
8 oz. tomato sauce
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 lb string beans, strung and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces
2 tbsp chopped fresh mint
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
salt and pepper to taste
Heat the Smart Balance (butter or any butter substitute will do, and substituting olive oil for 1 of the 3 tbsp is even better) in a wide, shallow saucepan over medium heat. Once it has melted, stir in the tomato sauce. Add potatoes, string beans and just enough water to cover. Stir, cover and simmer until potatoes are fork tender (30-45 minutes depending on heat). Remove lid, stir in salt, pepper, parsley and mint and cook uncovered until sauce has thickened.

Sauteed turnips and kale:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 turnips, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium bunch kale, coarsely chopped, stems removed
salt and crushed red pepper to taste
Rinse the kale well to remove any dirt. Heat olive oil in saucepan over medium heat. Add turnips and garlic and cook until slightly softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the kale, salt and crushed red pepper, cover and cook until kale has wilted, about 5 more minutes.

Shrimp scampi**:
10-12 oz. shrimp (peeled and deveined), thawed
olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
salt and fresh ground pepper
Heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir and cook uncovered until sauce has thickened, about 5 minutes.

A couple of things:
I rarely find butter preferable to a vegetable-based alternative except when making cookies, and I recently switched from Brummel and Brown to Smart Balance for the omega-3's and to avoid hydrogenated oils (where the trans fats are, making many butter substitutes even worse for you than butter).

The shrimp I used in the scampi was fully cooked when I took it out of the freezer, which made the end result a tad rubbery. (The original recipe called for uncooked shrimp.) It also called for white wine, which I skipped when I saw how much liquid cooked out of the shrimp; no point in overcooking it more than I needed to. If I ever make this again - and there's a good chance that I will, since it was very tasty despite the texture - I'll either use raw shrimp or set the cooked stuff aside, make the sauce first and slip in the shrimp at the very end, just long enough to warm it up.

Pat on the back: Steve said this meal was the best thing he'd eaten all day!

The next Pinckney's stash arrives Thursday. Stay tuned to find out what I pull out of my chef's hat next!

*Vilma Liacouras Chantiles. The Food of Greece.
**Original recipe available here.