Leeks vinaigrette
Elegant, from The Art of Simple Food.
Ingredients
6 medium leeks (about 3 lbs)
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp parsley, chopped
How to
Trim away the tough dark green tops and outer layers. Trim the roots while still allowing the leeks to hold together at the bottom. Wash repeatedly under cold water to remove all the grit between the leaves.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the leeks whole. Cover and cook until the thickest part of the leeks are tender when pierced with a knife, about 7-12 minutes depending on the thickness of the leeks.
When the leeks are tender, carefully remove them to a bowl of ice water and allow to cool. Then drain them and gently squeeze out any excess water. Cut the leeks lengthwise into halves or quarters and place them on a platter.
Mix the red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard and some salt and pepper. Whisk in 1/4 cup of olive oil until the vinaigrette emulsifies. Pour over the leeks and garnish with some chopped parsley.
Rosemary mashed potatoes
I promise you'll love this recipe and that you can't screw it up. Peel some potatoes, throw 'em in a pot, smash 'em together will butter and herbs. Don't skimp on the herbs, and pick something that pairs well with whatever you're eating.
Ingredients
2 lbs Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
4-6 sprigs of rosemary
4 tbsb butter, cut into chunks
1 cup or so of milk
How to
Add the potatoes and whole garlic to a large pot of cold water and bring to a boil. Cook until the potatoes are fork tender but don't break apart.
Meanwhile, is a small saucepan melt the butter and milk along with the rosemary or other herbs. Scald the milk but don't let it boil. The idea is to mix the milk and butter together and infuse the liquid with the herbs.
When the potatoes are cooked, drain in a colander and return to the pot. Pour in the milk, butter and herbs and mash everything together with a wooden spoon or vegetable masher. If the mixture looks too solid, add some more milk and/or butter. Add salt and pepper to taste. Feel free to serve the potatoes with the sprigs of rosemary intact or remove them beforehand.
Crispy white beans with chard
There's a lot to like about this recipe. The one piece of advice I'd give beyond what you'll find at the link is this: Exercise patience when pan-frying the beans. Get the heat up nice and high, make sure the beans are totally drained of liquid, and then leave them alone for a while after you add them to the pan. The only way to ensure the beans get the crispy exterior you want is to allow them to sit undisturbed over high heat for several minutes at least.
Oven roasted chicken breasts, butternut squash puree and roasted broccoli
And so we return to that simple formula: Protein + Puree + Vegetable = Dinner. It really never fails. I've already extolled the virtues of roasted broccoli here, but the other two pieces follow below.
Oven roasted boneless chicken breasts
There are a lot of boneless chicken breasts in the world, but few taste all that good. Tonight's dinner was one of those where you take the first bite and have this sinking feeling:
Why do I eat so many underwhelming pieces of chicken when it could taste like this?
I wish I had a better answer. But until I do, I'll still try to spread the gospel of the roasted boneless chicken breast.
Ingredients
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 tbsp butter + 1 tbsp olive oil
A handful of flour
2 cloves garlic, skin still on
How to
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Add the flour to a shallow bowl with some salt and pepper. Apply a bit more salt and pepper to the chicken breasts and then dredge them through the flour. You want only the thinnest coating of flour.
Melt the butter and oil in a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. (Why use both instead of just one or the other? The butter provides its unmistakable richness, but the olive oil will raise the smoking point and prevent the butter from burning on the stove or in the oven. Your smoke detector will thank you.) Add the garlic cloves and then the chicken breasts. Don't fiddle with them! Let the chicken breasts develop a nice brown crust, flip the over and brown on the other side, and move them to the oven. It shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes in the oven for the chicken to be fully cooked and still moist.
(Feel free to riff on this basic recipe. Add cayenne to the flour, or thyme to the butter, or lemon juice to the skillet at it heads into the oven. It's hard to screw this up.)
Butternut squash puree
Another simple but great base.
Ingredients
1 medium butternut squash, halved and with seeds removed
4 cloves garlic, whole
1-2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
Salt and pepper to taste
How to
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Rub just a small amount of olive oil on the inside and outside of the squash; you're just aiming for a light sheen to protect it. Apply salt and pepper to the inside flesh of the squash and lay flat on a baking sheet with the cloves of garlic hidden under the hollowed out bulb of each half.
Roast the squash for 45 minutes to an hour, until you can cleanly insert and remove a fork without experiencing any resistance. Scoop the flesh out of the skin and into a blender or food processor along with the roasted garlic and the butter. Puree until smooth and season with salt and pepper.
Rainbow chard with lemon and parmesan
Here's an easy one:
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
2. Dunk a pound of whole swiss chard leaves into the pot and let boil for 2-3 minutes.
3. Remove the chard to ice water to stop the cooking process, then squeeze as much liquid out of the leaves as you can. Really squeeze!
4. Roughly chop the leaves and toss with a couple tablespoons of melter butter, salt, pepper, the juice of half a lemon, and some shaved parmesan or other hard cheese.
Grilled beets and bulbs
This recipe is a bit of a strange combination - vegetables that I often associate with winter cooked in a method saved for summer. The sweet cippolini onions and beets are nicely balanced by the char from the grill. The smokiness can be almost overwhelming -- I'd recommend trying serving this topped with something to smooth out the flavor. (An orange aioli, perhaps?)
Ingredients
1 1/2 lb beets, peeled and sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch thick rounds
1 bulb fennel, sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch thick rounds
1/2 lb cippolini onions, peeled or not
A few cloves of garlic, unpeeled
Olive oil
How to
Raise a grill to medium heat. Toss all of the ingredients in a bowl until the vegetables are well coated with oil. Put the vegetables in a basket on the grill and toss occasionally until they are well browned and the beets can be pierced with a fork with only a little resistance. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Pesto ratatouille
Ingredients
1 zucchini, sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic, finely minced
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
Pesto
How to
Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large skillet until very hot. Add the onions and saute until they begin to become translucent. Add the pepper and zucchini to the pan and sauté for another five minutes before adding the tomatoes and cooking for another five. Toss in the garlic and stir until fragrant, no more than 30 seconds. Stir in the pesto and serve warm or at room temperature.
Fresh pea soup
Sunday night after a weekend in Philadelphia (read: Dalessandro's) requires a sort of detox dinner. Bread, salad, and something fresh to make you feel fully human again. Enter fresh peas.
The gold standard for me is a bowl of pea soup I had at Mercer Kitchen a year ago. It was perfectly smooth, vibrantly green, and tasted like ten thousand peas had be juiced and reduced to a single bowl. The key here is not to skimp on the peas -- they're delicate and so you need a lot of them to get that really intense spring flavor.
Ingredients
2 cups leeks, sliced
3 cups fresh peas, shelled
3 tbsp butter
5 cups water
Fresh herbs for garnish (thyme, mint, tarragon, chervil or chives all work)
How to
Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the leeks, stirring to coat. Allow the leeks to cook for about five minutes, by which time they will have significantly reduced. Add the water and bring to a boil. Toss in the peas and allow them to simmer for no more than five minutes. Remove them from the heat and allow to cool to a reasonable temperature, and then puree in batches until smooth. Garnish with herbs and parmesan.
Roasted broccoli
I will admit that I was more than a little puzzled by this article in the NY Times a couple months ago. In it Martha Rose Shulman writes: "I’d never thought of roasting broccoli, for instance, but now I’ll be roasting that vegetable as often as I steam it, for sure."
Wait, what? You write a food column for the New York Times and you've never before thought to put broccoli in an oven? Damn it people, stop steaming your broccoli! Toss those little trees in the oven already. I swear, it couldn't be much easier.
Cut up a head of broccoli. Toss with salt, pepper, olive oil, and a few cloves of garlic -- the more the better, honestly. Slide a baking sheet with the broccoli into an over at 425 for 25 minutes, tossing once or twice to prevent burning. Squeeze some more lemon over the top and eat like popcorn.
Grilled vegetable ratatouille
2 tomatoes, halves
2 red peppers, halved
2 ears of corn
2 zucchini, cut into quarter-inch rounds
1 medium onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
Basil, roughly torn
How to
It was Alice Waters night in the Bartholomew-Pitoniak household. Alongside her grilled fish recipe I decided to try out grilled vegetable ratatouille from The Art of Simple Food.
First, pick your veggies. Go with what's fresh and looks good; don't be too particular about what follows here or in the Waters Bible. Tonight it was corn, tomatoes, zucchini, red peppers and onions. Trim them and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper.
In a vegetable grilling contraption over medium heat on the grill, I place the two halved tomatoes flat side down alongside the halved peppers. After they began to brown I added the zucchini and onions. The corn went on the grill still on the cob. There's very little to add here in terms of guidance -- just keep an eye on things, allow them to develop a nice char, and remove them. Strip the kernels from the ears of corn, cut the vegetables into half-inch pieces, and toss the whole thing with salt, pepper, olive oil, a clove or two of minced garlic and a few leaves of roughly torn basil. Anna even went into the backyard to pick the basil from our struggling little plant, a detail that made us feel like a couple of little Bay Area Alice Waters acolytes.