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Shrimp in Seconds (tapas, party snack, salad topper or killer wrap/tortilla filler)

13 Sep

A bag of frozen shrimp in the fridge is worth its weight in gold when you have surprise guests, a hankering for seafood or you just want a tasty, quick, low-fat protein that you can eat with your fingers. It thaws in no time, cooks in less than no time, and is a virtually guaranteed crowd-pleaser. I also use any leftovers for lunch the next day!

This recipe is so basic it almost doesn’t seem like a recipe to me, but it gets the job done when you just want to eat without fussing and be able to sit down with your guests and actually eat and relax.

Casual Sauteed Shrimp (Appetizer or Salad Topper or Wrap Ingredient)

15-20 medium frozen shrimp (31-40 is fine and usually reasonably priced; pre-peeled is nice….).

1 tsp Old Bay Seasoning

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

Do a Quick Thaw McGraw on the shrimp in a bowl of room-temperature water, turning occasionally changing water if things are moving too slowly. Ten minutes is all you really need. Peel shrimp if necessary, leaving tails on.

Drain shrimp and pat dry with a paper towel and place in a bowl. Add Old Bay Seasoning and stir to coat.

Heat oil at medium high in a skillet. When oil is loose and fragrant, add shrimp and cook for about two minutes, stirring frequently until they are pink-white (not translucent) and curled up. You don’t want to overcook, so pull them out as soon as they begin to stiffen. You can cut through one experimentally to check that all translucence is gone.

Remove from heat and serve as finger food with plenty of napkins and cocktail sauce, lemon wedges or anything else you like to dip shrimp into. Garlic mayo (aioli) comes to mind https://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/tapas-1-make-your-own-mayo/ Or use to top a salad. I have used them in wraps, cold out of the fridge and sliced in half lengthwise, along with fresh or roasted vegetables, white cheese or feta and a smear of hummus. You can also stir into pasta, adding a bit more oil and lemon.

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Apple Cinnamon Muffins (Easing into a delicious autumn)

11 Sep

The start of the school year makes me think of cozy sweaters, red wine and apples. There are good things about the end of summer and those are three of the best.

It is also the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and a little comfort food is in order.

Continue reading →

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Quick Cannellini Bean Salad (great with tomatoes or on toast!)

9 Sep

Cannellini beans have come to the rescue a couple of times this week – once when I needed something to take across the street to dinner that would show off one of the tomatoes we grew in our backyard and then when we had a mom and kid playdate and I wanted a quick addition to a snack-y type table, along with hummus, veggies, crackers, grapes, sun-dried tomatoes and cheese.

These little white beans are tasty right out of the can, so you are only seconds from a hearty snack when you have it in your pantry. I think I’ll be using this recipe a lot this winter to add dash and protein satisfaction to otherwise ordinary salads.

A delicious salad that makes a meal. Look at those glorious tomatoes.

Quick Cannellini Bean Salad (great with tomatoes!)

1 15oz can cannellini (white) beans, rinsed and drained

1/4 onion, peeled and minced (red onion preferred, but use what you’ve got)

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

¼ -1/2 tsp red or white wine vinegar

¼ – ½ tsp balsamic vinegar

½ tsp oregano/Italian herbs/your favorite dried herb. Double the quantity for fresh chopped herbs.

Pinch salt

Freshly cracked black pepper

(optional, small chunks of tomato, seeded)

Place beans and minced onion in a bowl. In a separate bowl or cup, whisk together oil and vinegars (you can adjust vinegars to your personal taste). Pour over beans, add remaining ingredients. mix thoroughly and serve.

 

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Freeze! The Lazy (or clever) Cook’s Guide to Preserving Tomatoes

5 Sep

This was the year I would start preserving and canning…at least that’s what I swore when I laid down the money for a canning pot and associated equipment at Walmart a couple of months ago (Walmart being the new Woolworth’s; it is where you will find a lot of the old-fashioned domestic arts type of stuff that Woolworth’s used to carry back in the day).

Well, canning with heat didn’t happen, or at least hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t look like happening any time soon. But I have still been making an effort to preserve some of the flavors of summer for the colder months in a less time-consuming and sweaty way. Regular visitors will remember a creole tomato sauce I made and froze for later, for example https://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/fresh-tomato-sauce-criollo-style/.

But at this time of year, with all the vegetables we have and the time to work with them running short due to school, I had to shorten even the shortcuts. So I blanched and froze sauce tomatoes for later.

All you have to do is

1) take your farm fresh, ripe tomatoes, wash and core the stem area (you don’t have to go all the way down; just take a cone out),

2) throw them in boiling water for a minute (until they start to split)– 30 seconds for smaller tomatoes — and then

3) plunge them in ice water for about five minutes for large tomatoes and a couple of minutes for small.

Et voila! Freezer-ready tomatoes. Some people peel them at that point; I sometimes do and sometimes don’t. You will have to do it when you thaw them later, as the skins get chewy in the freezer. Some people don’t even blanch them, but I do like to set the flavor and freshness and I think blanching does that pretty well. Anyway, once they are cool, all you have to do is

4) put them in a freezer bag (quartering them is optional), squeeze out the air, seal and label them. Stick them in the freezer and they will keep 6-8 months and will be suitable for sauces and soups (not salads, as the texture will get mushy over time.

Right now I have a few pounds of San Marzanos, a pound of plum tomatoes and about four pounds of whatever yellow tomatoes it is that I am getting from the farm. I am going to be soooooo, sooooo, sooooo happy to make fresh sauce or minestrone with them in the dark days of February when my arms are about to fall off from shoveling snow!

Recommended tomatoes are Roma, Brandywine and plums, as they make great sauce!

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Rosemary and Lemon Roasted Chicken (love it hot or cold)

1 Sep

Things in the kitchen are speeding up for me as I return to teaching, Leandro returns to daycare, and the summer harvest continues to be really bountiful. Ironically, almost everyone I know who would usually help me prepare/eat all this food has been away, including Allison, with whom my family splits our farm share.

So I’ve been going nuts trying to cook or preserve it all while also gearing up for the new semester. Yeah, I am overwhelmed.

But, I am also compelled to share recipes and this one is a goodie – a simple yet sophisticated roast chicken (I am very fond of roast chicken) that comes out subtle and juicy and really showed off the fine qualities of the pastured chickens Trisha Hardgrove has been producing at Restoration Farm. The texture and grain of these birds is far superior to anything I’ve had from a supermarket or specialty store (including expensive organic or “natural” birds). They even look cleaner and healthier that a commercial bird when plucked and when I am cutting into them.

Since I believe in packing the oven whenever possible, I made Slow-Roasted Cherry Tiny Tomatoes https://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/slow-roasted-grape-tomatoes-for-pasta-bruschetta-or-sandwiches/at the same time. This dish would also be very fine with string beans (now at distribution at our CSA) or roasted summer squash (abundant right now).

I made this ahead of Hurricane Irene and brought the chicken and tomatoes over to the kind neighbors who had us sleep over their house on the night the storm hit (I got spooked by the banging on the roof). It made a terrific cold lunch when the power was out. Hot or cold, roast chicken brings comfort.

Rosemary and Lemon Roasted Chicken

1 roasting chicken (4-5 lbs), giblets removed

Olive oil for rubbing

4 cloves garlic, minced into a tsp coarse salt

Juice of two juicy lemons (Meyer lemons are recommended, but if you haven’t got, be prepared to add ½ tsp sugar or a tsp of orange juice to the rub), squeezed lemons reserved

¼ Cup coarsely chopped fresh rosemary leaves (may add another ¼ Cup fresh, or supplement with a smaller amount of dried rosemary) plus 8 rosemary sprigs

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

Coarse salt

Preheat oven to 375°F and place rack in the center. Rinse and dry the chicken with paper towels, trimming and discarding extra fat.

Place chicken breast side down on roasting pan (you may also use roasting rack to good effect) and rub the oil and half the garlic onto the skin. Pour half the lemon juice on the back (along with sugar or orange juice), as well as half the chopped rosemary and half the cayenne.

Turn the chicken over and gently separate the skin from the breast, leaving skin on. Insert on rosemary sprig on each side. Then repeat the rub with more oil and the remaining garlic, lemon juice, rosemary and cayenne. Sprinkle on additional coarse salt to taste.

Tuck a rosemary sprig under each wing and the remaining four sprigs in the cavity with the squeezed-out lemons.

Bake the chicken, breast side up, basting once or twice, until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh (without touching bone) registers 170°F (1 to 1.5 hours).

Before serving, let the chicken rest, covered loosely with aluminum foil, for 20 minutes.

(This recipe was inspired by”Kathy’s Rosemary-Roasted Chicken” in Food To Live By, by Myra Goodman –the Earthbound Farm lady!)

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Fresh Tomato Sauce – Criollo-Style!

27 Aug

We anticipate a lot of flooding from Hurricane Irene, but the inundation I have been dealing with is far more pleasant: tomatoes. At Restoration Farm pick-up on Thursday, Farmer Dan’s dad, Daniel Holmes, heard I intended to make sauce and came up with four generous pounds of “seconds”: tomatoes that were harvested but don’t look pretty enough for distribution; a little bruised, maybe split, over-ripe – glorious grabbing for a peasant-hearted person. I was eager to take them, then of course got home and thought…oh s**t, I have to do these like, now, or what’s  the point?

And then I wasn’t sure how well my food mill would work – it seems to be missing a piece  – but I was in NO MOOD to blanch, peel and seed all these smaller tomatoes before cooking, so I went for it, just quartered them and dumped them in the pot. Luckily for me, I was able to rig the food mill to work, but if you are wondering what to get me for my birthday…(an egg timer would be equally welcome)

So, here is a very simple recipe for tomato sauce that tastes just like what my grandmother and her sisters used to make, often cooked with chopped eggplant or chicken thighs on the bone…I am not quite sure what I am going to do with my quart of sauce – it is in the freezer where it will keep for a few months, but I suspect that I will soon be misting up with nostalgia for my abuela over a bowl of eggplant and this sauce over rice.

If you are looking for an Italian style sauce, substitute the sofrito with a couple of sprigs of fresh basil (I may actually be doing that this afternoon with another batch while we still have electricity ) and add julienned basil at the end of cooking.

This sauce can be made anytime, substituting tomatoes from a can, but it is at its most fresh, light and charming when you take advantage of really ripe tomatoes.

This is pasta sauce the way my grandmother used to make it

Fresh Tomato Sauce – Criollo-Style

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

4 lbs ripe tomatoes, quartered if you have a food mill, peeled, seeded and diced if you don’t

¼-1/2 tsp sugar

4 Tbs homemade or prepared sofrito or two ice cubes worth if you have frozen (https://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/sofrito-for-freezing-puerto-rican-mirepoix/)

Coarse salt, to taste (you’ll be adding it by the half teaspoon)

In a heavy-bottomed 3-quart saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat and add the garlic. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, 1-2 minutes. Do not allow to burn.

Add the tomatoes, sugar, sofrito and ½ tsp salt and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low (a gentle simmer) and cook, stirring often until thickened. I simmer at least 30 minutes, but juicier tomatoes take longer.  Taste and add salt, as desired.

If using a food mill, use the medium blade. The peeled and seeded tomatoes will break up on their own, but you can run through the blender for a smoother texture.

Makes about 1 quart.

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Tandoori-Style Roasted Chicken (great hot or cold!)

26 Aug

We picked up another pastured bird from our share at Restoration Farm this week, which reminded me how delicious the last one turned out.

While I decide what to do with this one (as Hurricane Irene churns her diabolical way up the Eastern Seaboard in our direction and I am checking batteries, gathering candles and surveying our canned goods), let me share this easy and extremely tasty recipe that tasted great right out of the oven, but also made for an excellent quick-grab out of the fridge in the following days, re-heated as well as cold!

This tandoori-style chicken was a recipe for whole chicken that Leandro picked out from a magazine (EveryDay Food, from Martha Stewart). He thought the picture looked very tasty and we had everything we needed in the house, except maybe the ginger. Since I am encouraging him to start eating chicken off the bone, letting him select the recipe worked out very well. I just tweaked the original to our tastes (more garlic, more spice) and it was smooth sailing!

Tandoori-style oven-roasted chicken

1 whole chicken (4-4.5 lbs), rinsed, patted dry and quartered (skin on)

1 cup plain non- or low-fat yogurt

½ yellow onion, roughly chopped

2-inch piece ginger, peeled (with vegetable peeler) and sliced

3 garlic cloves, peeled

3 Tbs fresh lemon juice

1 tsp ground cumin

1 – 1.5 tsp ground coriander

1 Tbs vegetable oil

Coarse salt and ground pepper

Place chicken pieces in a gallon-size zip-top bag. In a blender or food processor, blend all other ingredients until smooth and pour into bag. Seal and shake and refrigerate (4 hours to overnight).

Preheat oven to 500°F. Place a wire rack in a foil-lined baking sheet with sides. Place chicken parts on rack, skin side down, seasoning generously with salt and pepper. Roast until begins to char and flip for a total of about 35 minutes. Reduce heat to 450°F and roast until chicken is cooked through, 8-10 more minutes (insert meat thermometer into thickest part of thigh to check). Allow to rest 5 minutes before serving.

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Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese

17 Aug

Beets keep for three weeks or so in the fridge (You should always cut the beet greens to an inch before storing and use the beet greens right away), so if you have any in the cool box waiting for inspiration, this is a simple dish that results in big flavor and gorgeous visuals.

I think you will especially like the vinaigrette (and you can reserve some to use on salads later in the week; it really perks up a simple, seasonal fresh from the garden tomato and cucumber salad like the one I had today with a bit of feta).

This became an instant top ten for my mom; we are all big salad eaters around here (except for my son, but nevermind; we’re working on it) but even those most dedicated herbivore needs a wake up for the taste buds. Beets and goat cheese have become a classic flavor combination with good reason, so don’t wait ’till you see it on a menu. DIY!

Thanks to Adriana for inspiring this recipe in a comment on an earlier beet recipe (beets and greens with orange). https://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/roasted-beet-salad-with-orange-and-beet-greens/.

Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese

Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad

5-6 medium beets, tops trimmed to one inch, roots intact, washed and dried

3-4 Cups baby salad greens (spinach goes very well with this, as does arugula), washed and dried (if using large leaves, tear into bite-size pieces)

2 oz crumbly goat cheese

¼ of a red onion, thinly sliced (optional)

Handful of walnuts/cranberries (optional)

Vinaigrette

¼ Cup sherry or other mild vinegar (scant; reduce if using full-strength white or wine vinegar)

1 generous tsp prepared mustard (Dijon preferred)

¼ tsp agave nectar (or honey)

1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped

¼ Cup extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400°F. Wrap beets loosely in foil and roast about 40 minutes, until tender when pierced with a fork. Remove from foil and cool. When you can handle them easily, peel with your hands. You may want to use gloves or put your hands in a plastic bag to peel, as the beets stain fingers pink. Cut into small bite-size chunks.

Lay a bed of salad greens on a plate, top with beet chunks, and optional red onion, walnuts and cranberries. Dot with goat cheese.

Whisk all vinaigrette ingredients together in a small bowl. Drizzle over salad just before serving (You may want to pour dressing after the goat cheese to keep it from getting colored. You may also want to drizzle less rather than more to really enjoy the exciting flavors of the salad ingredients).

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Chickpea and Tahini Salad

8 Aug

Regular readers know my love for chickpeas. I love my Gingery Marinated Chickpeas (Greta Garbanzo https://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com/?s=greta+garbanzo&submit=Search,) but decided it was time to freshen up my outlook.

Thus, this Chickpea and Tahini salad…perfect to accompany summer BBQ or Mediterranean buffet, an excellent side dish to just about anything, and best of all, easy! I made this a few hours ahead, and the little bit that remained made for great leftover snack lunch!

Chickpea and Tahini Salad

2 29 oz cans of garbanzos/chick peas/ceci, rinsed and drained

½ red onion, sliced thin

2 ripe tomatoes, seeds and gel removed and chopped

1 Tbs cilantro leaves (can go to two if you like) chopped fine

1 Tbs mint leaves (can add another Tbs if desired) chopped fine

4 Tbs tahini

4 cloves garlic, pressed or minced super-fine

4-6 Tbs lemon juice

2 Tbs water

Salt to taste

Place chickpeas, onion, tomato, cilantro and mint in a bowl

In a separate bowl, whisk tahini, garlic, lemon juice and water until blended

Toss dressing in salad. Salt to taste.

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A quick link to some important New York Times magazine stories on food

5 Aug

As a foodie and food writer, Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan are among my personal heroes. The New York Times today published a short list of some important stories by them (and Gary Taubes, who I am just getting to know). They are longer articles, but well worth a look, if you are interested in the state of the American diet!

http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/long-story-shortlist-growling-stomach-edition/?hp#preview

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