Day 30: Pan Browned Scallops on a Bed of Bacon and Brussels Sprouts, Dressing-In-A-Bowl Simple Salad

No matter how many times I say it, it is always better with bacon.

Pan-Browned Scallops On a Bed of Bacon and Brussels Sprouts
Dressing-In-A-Bowl Simple Salad

Okay, I am distracted while writing this because I am multi-tasking and listening to Barack Obama's nomination speech. I may forever call this Democratic Convention Scallops.

I love bacon. I love brussels sprouts. I love scallops. And luckily, so does Trevor.

Start by trimming your sprouts (about 1 lb) and slicing them in half. Throw in a large, straight-sided pan with 1 cup water, 3 slices chopped bacon, and salt and pepper. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook until water is almost gone and bacon is giving off its fat. 7 minutes plus.

Lower the heat and add I Tablespoon of oil, 1 medium chopped onion, and fresh chopped tarragon. Don't overstir as you want the sprouts to brown.

When it is all nicely browned, scoop all of the mixture into a bowl on the side, wipe your pan out and heat again over medium-high heat. Add oil and once heated, add the scallops. Season them with salt and pepper and do not touch for a minute or two, letting them brown. Turn over for a minute on the other side, add the sprout mix back in and serve immediately.

Now, I think this cookbook would have you cook the scallops until they are firm, but I believe in flash cooking scallops. Much juicier and a better texture. Also, the tarragon was overkill and with all of the other flavors, you don't really need it.

I served on the side the Dressing-In-A-Bowl Simple Salad which is indeed simple. All it calls for is mixed greens tossed with olive oil, vinegar (half the amount of vinegar to the oil), salt, and pepper. I added shaved Parmigiano-Regianno and beets, carrots, and tomatoes from our farm share.

The salad was refreshing and light. The scallops were delicious. They were so good. This is so easy and will even satisfy picky eaters. (It is the bacon, I am NOT kidding!)

We are leaving tomorrow for our roap trip to Montana, Wyoming, and Walla Walla so we drank one of our nice bottles of wine we have been saving since we will be able to buy more this weekend. If you ever have a chance to drink Waters' Cabernet Sauvignon, don't pass it up.
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Day 29: Lemon-Garlic Roast Salmon on New Potatoes, Butter-steamed Leeks with Fresh Tarragon

I was dreading buying salmon as it is super-rare/expensive these days, but luckily my dad just went on his annual fishing trip and brought us back a lovely, perfect salmon.

Lemon-Garlic Roast Salmon on New Potatoes
Butter-Steamed Leeks with Fresh Tarragon

I know I will be shot upon saying this, but I am not a huge fan of salmon. I grew up in Bellingham, Washington which means that I grew up eating salmon. And now it is being over-fished and I always have so much guilt about eating it. It is hard to explain--even when we had our wedding reception, the caterer pushed salmon, and I fought against it.

But if I was going to make salmon, this dish is not a bad one to chose.

First, boil a pound or two of new potatoes in lots and lots of water.

Preheat your oven to 400 F.

While the potatoes are boiling, blend 1/2 cup olive oil, 5 garlic cloves, the juice of one large lemon and salt and pepper in the food processor. Place your salmon steaks/fillets in a shallow pan and pour the marinade over them. I put them back in the fridge, but I think it would be more prudent to let it all marinate at room temperature as it will cook quicker.

After 15 minutes or so, drain the potatoes and run them under cold water so you can stop the cooking and handle them. You are supposed to peel them, but this was a huge mess, so I gave up about half way through. Then slice them thin and overlap them in a baking pan. Drip some of the salmon marinade onto the potatoes and throw some capers on to boot. Then place your salmon on the potatoes, cover with the rest of the marinade and some more capers and cook 8-10 minutes.

I would like to point out at this point that it took 25 minutes to cook my salmon. It was a giant fillet and I kept it in the fridge to marinate which was my mistake. Just let it marinate on the counter and it will cook closer to the 10 minutes. Top with fresh chopped parsley.

Note: You can never go wrong with salmon, lemon, garlic, and capers. NEVER.

Meanwhile, I was cooking my Butter-Steamed Leeks with Fresh Tarragon.

Start with 3-6 leeks, depending on size. Trim away the roots and dark green part of the leeks. Slice lengthwise. Rinse well.

Heat up some butter and add your leeks, a sprig of tarragon, and salt and pepper. Brown gently and then add some white wine and chicken broth. Cover and cook 5-10 minutes. Lift the leeks out, add some water, and cook down your sauce until it gets a little syrupy. At the last second, mix in a little cream and barely heat. Pour over your leeks and sprinkle with fresh tarragon.

The leeks finished far quicker than my cold-marinated salmon, but I just threw some foil on the top and they were fine when I served them.

We both thought the tarragon was a little strong on these leeks. I think butter, garlic, salt, and pepper are all you really need here. Next time I will just skip the tarragon.

53 recipes down in How To Eat Supper.

Day 28: Oven-Crisped Pork, Peppers, and Greens

I made a variation of this already with lamb, but I think the pork works best.

Oven-Crisped Pork, Peppers, and Greens
Turkish Almond Sauce
Now if you haven't discovered the joy of cooking with a pork tenderloin, drop everything right NOW and go to the store and buy one! They are inexpensive, easy to prep and cook and take any type of spice, sweetness -or whatever flavor you choose- brilliantly.

All you do is slice up a pork tenderloin, a few peppers (hot and sweet of your choosing), and an onion. Now mix that with a handful or two of mixed greens, plus oil, salt, pepper, garlic, paprika, cumin, coriander, and allspice and toss it on a pre-heated baking sheet and throw it into a HOT 450 degree oven and cook for 20-25 minutes. Stir occasionally.

This is sooooooo easy. The pork comes out very crisp, just like the title says. When I made this with lamb, it was gamey and tasty, but it wasn't crisp. This is also easy to double so that you could serve a crowd.

Key to this recipe is to serve alongside Turkish Almond Sauce. First combine chopped garlic, a few tablespoons fine chopped sweet onion, and two tablespoons white wine vinegar. Set aside to mellow. (I did this step first, then prepared the pork.)

Next, beat 1/4 cup of olive oil into your garlic mix until creamy. Add salt and pepper and then stir in 1 cup of plain yogurt (I used half non-fat/ half regular and it was just fine), 1 cup chopped almonds, and a lot of chopped cilantro. They always say, cilantro is optional, but I disagree! Cilantro is key! And this sauce is delicious and really brings everything together.

I served it with homemade flat bread, corn on the cob slathered in butter, and a cheap Washington Cabernet Sauvignon. Yum yum!

51 recipes down in How to Eat Supper.

Day 27: Dark and Moist Gingerbread with Cheesecake Pockets (Variation)

The original version of this gingerbread was so tasty that I thought to make one of the variations for a party I was going to.

Dark and Moist Gingerbread with Cheesecake Pockets

First, let me say this came out delicious and spicy and soft and moist and disappeared at the party.

However, once again after making one of the variations, I am thinking the authors didn't bother to make their own variation.

You start with the same exact gingerbread batter. Except only pour half the batter into your prepared pan. Then you drop spoonfuls of your cream cheese mixture (cream cheese, one egg, sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla extract) onto your batter. Top with the next half of the gingerbread batter and cook.

The reason I think they didn't even bother to cook this is the cheese mixture was so runny with the egg and lemon juice and extract that I couldn't even spoon it out of the bowl. I just poured the thin batter into the pan and it spread everywhere. When I topped it with the gingerbread batter which was much thicker, all of the cheese mix was pushed to the edges.

In the end, I think the cheese part was more trouble than its worth. A bite of the cream cheese means you miss all the yummy flavors in the gingerbread. Next time I will skip the added hassle of the cheese and make the delicious bread naked as it should be.

50 recipes down in How to Eat Supper.

Day 26: Roast Fish with Preserved Lemon and Garlic (Varitation)

I haven't cooked much fish out of this cookbook yet, so I made an effort today to get some fish fillets.

Roast Fish with Preserved Lemon and Garlic

This is one of the variation recipes so the instructions are fairly vague. The recipe says to get any preferred fillet, steak, or whole fish so I decided to get Tilapia fillets. I chose U.S. farmed Tilapia because it is a nice simple, white fish that takes flavor well, is inexpensive, and is on the best fish to eat list of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch.

Start by pre-heating your oven to 450 and pre-heating your roasting pan with a layer of oil in it at the same time. I am not sure if pre-heating the oil in the pan actually helps. If anything, it just makes it more likely that you will get burned because you will forget that the pan is hot!

While your pan is heating up, blend a quarter of a preseved lemon with olive oil, garlic, and pepper in your food processor. If using a whole fish, like a small trout, you will need to make cuts in the side of the fish. Rub the preserved lemon mix all over the fish and into the slits. For my thin fillets I didn't bother making any slits but made sure they were well covered.

Then, get your heated pan out of the oven and place a generous layer of sliced onoin, cilantro, and oranges in the bottom. This stops your fish from sticking to the bottom of the pan and I think is an extra nice touch. Veggies cooked at the same time and less mess. Lay your fish on top of the onion bed and cook for 8-12 minutes, depending on the type of fish you bought.

When you serve, you have to use 2 spatulas to scoop up the veggies and fish at the sme time and keep it looking nice. Serve with a squeeze of lemon and impress your dinner guests with your pretty presentation. This was a nice, simple way to cook fish and the preserved lemon, as always, added a nice flavor and tartness.

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Day 25: Jerry Traunfeld's Tarragon Chicken Breasts with Buttery Leeks, Wine-Braised Carrots with Fried Sage Leaves, and Rustic Jam Shortbread Tart

I have a little more free time this week, so I am making a lot of food to get ahead of myself for when we go on our road trip next week and I don't cook anything....

Jerry Traunfeld's Tarragon Chicken Breasts in Buttery Leeks
Wine-Braised Carrots with Fried Sage Leaves
Rustic Jam Shortbread Tart

I have no idea who Jerry is, they just mention he is a chef, I am not sure from where, but he does know what he is doing!

Disclaimer: I made this with organic chicken thighs because I think they taste delicious and they are about 1/3rd the price of chicken breasts. I skinned them, but left the bone in.

This is a nice, aromatic entree. Thin slice a leek or two and and place in a large skillet with a couple tablespoons of butter and 2 cups of chicken broth. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for about 8-10 minutes, letting the broth cook down a little. Sprinkle your chicken with salt and pepper (they called for 4 boneless, skinless, organic breasts) and place them in the leek mixture, spooning some of the leeks onto them. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer until breasts are done, 10-15 minutes. My bone-in thighs took about 15 minutes.

Transfer your cooked chicken to a plate. I covered mine and set in the oven to keep warm. Then, increase the heat under your leeks and add 2 more tablespoons of butter (mmm, good), some lemon juice, and FRESH, coarse chopped tarragon. Cook until the butter melts or cook down some more if you want a thicker sauce. To serve, pour over your chicken.

There really is something magical about fresh tarragon and butter. I don't use tarragon that often, but it is subtle and works well here because everything else is so mild. I placed a chicken thigh on rice and then poured the sauce on top of both.

The Wine-Braised Carrots with Fried Sage Leaves was a little high maintenance. First you take 16 sage leaves and fry them in oil. (Again, they wanted me to use olive oil, but I ignored them, especially with making the oil this hot!) You are supposed to fry them for less than a minute and drain them on paper towels. I followed this to the letter, but my sage ended up with a very bitter taste. Maybe if you cooked them for 2o seconds, they would have more flavor. Set those aside for now.

Then in the same oil you fried the sage, saute carrots cut on the diagonal with 1/2 onion, minced and 6 chopped fresh sage leaves. Saute for a few minutes and then add 1/2 cup wine and water to cover the carrots. I didn't completely cover the carrots with water. (I am not fond of overly mushy carrots.) Bring to a boil and cover. Cook for 10 minutes or so and then uncover and stir to cover the carrots in the glaze. Transfer to a serving dish and scatter your fried sage leaves over top.

I love anything braised in white wine, but the fried sage really ruined this dish for me. Luckily, once I realized I didn't like the leaves, I was able to pick them out and enjoy the rest of the dish. The leaves add a crunchiness and that weird, bitter taste and clashed with the delicate carrots and onions. I admit, I might have cooked the sage a hair too long, but I think it was an added step to add drama to the dish. The fresh sage, however, added nice flavor. Next time I will skip the frying and add some more fresh sage into the mix. It was also easy to cook this alongside my chicken and adjust the temp to time everything to be done at the same time.

The dessert I made ahead of time. This might be one of the easiest tart recipes I have ever done. My only problem is that they used a 9" tart pan, I only had an 11" tart pan and so my dough was stretched a little thin and the tart nearly over-cooked even though I took it out 5 minutes early.

In a food processor, blend lemon zest and whole almonds until fine. Then add flour, sugar, salt, butter, an egg yolk, and almond extract. Blend until cut-in like "clusters of peas".

Using your hands, spread dough out in a buttered tart pan, making a standing rim as you go. Cook the crust first. I also pierced the crust with a fork-the recipe didn't call for this, but I always do that out of habit.

When the crust is just starting to brown, pull out of the oven, spread 3/4 cup of the jam of your choice over the tart and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes until the jam is warm and bubbly. This is a great way to use up the ends of whatever jam you have in the fridge. I used the FABULOUS raspberry jam my friend Jennifer just jarred, mixed with a last little bit of peach jam. This was tasty and rich. I will either 1 and 1/2 times the recipe for my large tart pan or I will have to accept that I need another kitchen item.

48 recipes down in How To Eat Supper.

Day 24: Iced Cantaloupe Soup with Jalapeno and Basil

It is hard to remember wanting to make a cold soup just a few days ago when today it is drizzly and overcast.

Iced Cantaloupe Soup with Jalapeno and Basil

This is basically the same thing as the Thai Cantaloupe Salad with Chile that I made a few weeks back, only you add ice and puree the whole thing.

This is super easy with no cooking and comes off very sophisticated. The authors recommend using a food processor, but next time I will use a blender because the processor didn't chop up the ice very well.

Blend one chopped up cantaloupe (no seeds or rind, obviously) with 2 cups ice, salt, pepper, sugar, and lime juice. Stir in a little grated lime zest.

I made this ahead of time and put it in a pitcher in the fridge. When ready to serve, you have to stir it a little as it starts to separate. Pour into serving bowls and garnish with diced jalapeno, red onion, and fresh basil.

This is so DELICIOUS! It may sound a little weird, but it is refreshing and has a little zip and the toppings are really essential to make it taste far more complex than it really is. This is one of my favorites so far.

45 recipes down in How to Eat Supper.

Day 23: Smothered Broccoli with Peppers, Onions, and Raisins, Greek Pot-Crushed Potatoes

I have been dreading this recipe because the photo is so ugly in the cookbook. I was given a suggestion to make a meal out of all the recipes that don't seem too appetizing, but I don't think I could emotionally handle all of that at one meal.

Smothered Broccoli with Peppers, Onions, and Raisins
Greek Pot-Crushed Potatoes

Bonus: Karen's mom's Baby Back Ribs

Let's start with the least appetizing of the bunch, the Smothered Broccoli. I am not sure I would call anything "smothered" and expect people to want to eat it, except maybe if it said "Smothered in butter" or "smothered in hot fudge" or something like that. Also, I think of smothered as something slow cooked, but this recipe tells you to cook your onions for only 3 minutes!

This recipe has too much in it. First, you steam your broccoli and then set it aside, on a serving platter, to get cold while you make the rest of it.

Then you saute bell peppers, thin-sliced red onion, fresh rosemary, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper. THEN, add raisins. THEN, add toasted pine nuts when you pour the whole mess over your broccoli. It should be called Cold Broccoli with Way Too Many Ingredients. This seems so wrong to me. Pine nuts and raisins and rosemary and peppers and broccoli? Everything tasted great by itself. If you took a bite of broccoli and it had a bit of red onion, that tasted fine. A little broccoli and a pine nut, interesting, but fine. But all of it together is really not delicious at all. The rosemary over-powers and call me a backwoods simpleton, but broccoli and raisins might not have ever been meant to be on the same plate together.

I might make this again without the pine nuts or raisins. But I would also toss the broccoli in with the saute to heat them up a little before serving.

Whew, raced through that one, now onto the Greek Pot-Crushed Potatoes. These were really tasty. Thin slice red potatoes and boil them until tender (about 8 minutes). Drain them and then use the same pot to saute 8 large garlic cloves with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and water. The water is essential so the garlic doesn't burn. Add fresh oregano, cook until fragrant and then add the potatoes back to the pot. Smash the potatoes with your wooden spoon as you blend them into the garlic mixture. Blend in chopped parsley, lemon juice, and thin sliced green onion.

The parsley and lemon were essential here and really rounded out the flavor in the potatoes. This tasted a lot more interesting than plain old mash potatoes and since you didn't peel them and then mashed them gently with your spoon they still have a lot of texture and color. Good side dish for most any meal.

Now the main entree was NOT from the How to Eat Supper, but our friend Karen brought over some tasty ribs to a party and I convinced her to give me the recipe.

Karen's Mom's Baby Back Ribs

2lbs pork baby back ribs
garlic power and/or any type of seasoning you like. I added pepper.
1 container of your favorite BBQ sauce. (1+ cup)

Rub meat with spices and let sit for half an hour to 3 hours.
Cover baking sheet with foil, transfer ribs to sheet-meat side up, and then cover tightly with foil.
Cook for 2 hours at 250 degrees. Check for doneness at 1 1/2 hours. Meat should separate easily from the bone.
Set oven to broil.
Uncover ribs and baste with your sauce.
Broil 5-6 inches from heat, 8 to 10 minutes, or until desired crispiness. Turn and baste a couple times during the process.

YUM!

44 recipes down in How to Eat Supper.

Day 22: Filipino-Style Chicken Adobo (Chicken in Tart Garlic Sauce)

I have to stop and plug my very neat new kitchen item, a

French Butter Bulb made by my friend Barbara Dunshee. This keeps your butter nice and fresh right on your counter and looks cool to boot!Back to the cookbook! I have turned to this recipe thinking, this looks easy to make!--and then remember it needs to be marinated over night and then I push the recipe aside and look for something else. Well, this time I actually managed to do some planning in advance and made it happen.

Filipino-style Chicken Adobo (Chicken in Tart Garlic Sauce)

I love recipes that call for chicken thighs because they are quick to cook, delicious, and a cheaper cut of chicken when it comes to shopping organic.

This recipe is very simple but requires a few dishes. The day before you want to make this, marinate 8 chicken thighs in a metallic or glass bowl along with 1/4 cup soy sauce, 10 chopped garlic cloves, black pepper, 1 and 1/4 cups cider vinegar, 2 broken up bay leaves, and 1 cup whole canned tomatoes and their juices, breaking up the tomatoes with your hands as you put them in the bowl. Cover that and stick it in the fridge for 18 plus hours.

The next day, turn out your chicken mix into a big pot and bring to a gentle bubble. Cook for 25 minutes or so, until your chicken is 175 degrees. Then remove the chicken so that you can brown it. Keep cooking the sauce to reduce it. The cookbook says to skim the fat, but there was no fat for me to skim. You are going to cook the sauce down by half.

In a big skillet brown your chicken in your preferred oil. Once chicken is brown, turn over, add 2 thin-slice onions and cook the chicken and onions, stirring occasionally so that the chicken doesn't stick.

I served this by also cooking the Working Mother's Barley, which is my favorite.

Scoop some barley into a plate, add a couple pieces of chicken plus lots of onions and top with a generous ladle of the sauce. Delicious! They aren't kidding that this is tart. Very flavorful and tastes like you spent a lot more time making it than you did. The vinegar is seriously mellowed out by the end of cooking. It was even better the next day. The sauce really penetrated into the chicken.

42 recipes down in How to Eat Supper.

DAY 21: Asian-style Chopped Salad on Lettuce Spears

Incredibly refreshing, this is easy to make in advance with no cooking required and easy to modify with whatever fresh ingredients are on hand.

Asian-style Chopped Salad on Lettuce Spears

This is very similar to a traditional Vietnamese cold salad. Make a dressing, add it to chopped vegetables and cold noodles and serve on lettuce leaves for eating by hand.

The dressing is similar to nuoc cham, only they don't add lime juice. Combine garlic, red peper flakes, fish sauce (always use the fish sauce, I know it is stinky at first, but it adds so much!), water, vinegar, and sugar in a food processor. At this point, the recipe calls for switching to a slicing blade on your food processor. I don't have a slicing blade, so I dumped the dressing in a smallish bowl and then thin sliced by hand radish and Walla Wall Sweet onion and put it in the dressing to marinate.

In another bowl, combine cooked, drained cellophane rice noodles, shredded napa cabbage, sliced sausage ( I used Portuguese sausage but you can use any type of chorizo or Asian sausage), sliced basil, cilantro, and mint. The authors usually say cilantro optional in their recipes. I am starting to think they don't like cilantro, but I think it is absolutely essential in any Southeast Asian dish.

When you are ready to serve, mix the dressing/radish/onion blend into the salad and add salted peanuts, crushed if you like, and a chopped apple. The apple was a nice, crispy and juicy touch.

To serve, let guests put their desired amount onto lettuce leaves, add a squeeze of lime, roll up, and enjoy!! This is fun since everybody is active and creating their own little "spears". I also added baby corn and scallions to the serving platter. It would also be good with tofu, chicken, or pork. You could even shread the lettuce and just serve it as a big salad. Next time I would save the lime wedges and just put lime juice directly in the dressing.
Ok, this is Trevor and my friend Jennifer. You can barely see our friend Karen's hand. She was over but was eating a special diet this week so she is eating something different, which is why she is so ungenerously cut out of the picture!

41 recipes down in How to Eat Supper.

NEW DRINK

POMEGRANATE PIMM FIZZ

Muddle lime with raspberries and mint. Add 1 part PIMMS and 2 or 3 parts Pomegranate Beverage OR Limeaid. Shake and serve over ice with a lime wedge. YUM!

Day 20: Quintessential Pesto with Linguine and Lynne's Retro Garlic Bread

I am glad I have been forcing myself to go to the gym as these recipes are not for the dainty!

Quintessential Pesto with Linguine
Lynne's Retro Garlic Bread

Basil is in season and I have been getting it in our farm share so I just keep on with the pesto! A friend just told me a trick the other day, make a double or triple batch of pesto but before adding the cheese, freeze half of it for another day. That was easy to do!

I will spare you the pesto part of the recipe as I covered it just a few posts ago, but the very interesting thing about this recipe is how they cooked their linguine.

Again, they said to start with a pound of linguine. Last time I did this, I had way too much pasta and not enough sauce. So I used a little over half a pound. Boil a gigantic pot of salted water. (Side note: tons of salt in your pasta water is essential. Do not worry about getting too much salt in your diet. The trick here is that the salt makes the water cook at a higher temperature and then your pasta will cook faster and have less chance of getting all gummy.)

When you toss the linguine in the water add 1 or 2 peeled, thin-sliced red potatoes and 1/2 lb or more of 1" slices of green beans. Then your veggies cook right with the pasta and the potatoes are creamy and no extra mess of an additional pan. RESERVE one half cup of pasta water before draining. Toss pasta and veggies with your pesto and add some of that reserved water to spread out the sauce.

This was a revelation for me. Why haven't I ever thought of this before? You can do this with lots of different veggies and then it is ready to toss with whatever sauce or flavorings you prefer.

Lynne's Retro Garlic Bread is a crowd pleaser. Split a baguette down the middle and separate the halves. Put them on a foil-lined baking sheet, face up. My baguette was so long and skinny I had to cut it into several pieces to all fit on the sheet. Set aside for now.

Turn oven to 400. In a saute pan, combine 3 T olive oil, 3 T butter, 1/4 cup water, 5 minced garlic cloves, dried basil and dried oregano, and salt and pepper. Set over VERY LOW heat. I used the olive oil here because the heat is kept medium-low to low the whole time. Gently cook, covered, for 10 minutes. when the garlic is soft, uncover and cook a few minutes more until all of the water is cooked out. Then divide on top of your baguette. Top with 1 cup shredded Asiago or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Cook in oven for 10 to 15 minutes until cheese is nice and bubbly. Serve immediately. Taste of the proverbial heaven.

Luckily I looked very carefully at the recipe before I started as, once again, the authors screwed up their given cooking times. In the book it says, 5 minutes prep, 15 minutes oven. But they forgot after 5 minutes prep, there is 10-12 minutes of stove time and then 15 minutes oven time. But I worked it all out and the pasta was just placed on our plates when I took the bread out of the oven. The bread was so good we ate the whole thing. Oh boy, do I need to get to the gym again tomorrow.....

40 recipes down in How to Eat Supper.

DAY 19: Oven Crisped Lamb, Peppers, and Greens (Variation) and Turkish Almond Sauce

Whew! When your computer gets a virus, it is an excellent opportunity to procrastinate and not work on your cooking blog! Computer is still being worked on by husband, not sure when I will be able to get my photos off of it!

Oven Crisped Lamb, Peppers, and Greens (Variation from Crisped Pork)
Turkish Almond Sauce

After I didn't buy the extremely expensive lamb chops in protest the other night, I realized I had a large, expensive, organic, leg of lamb in the freezer. I bought this from our favorite ranch, THUNDERING HOOVES--(which I will spare you my normal rant, just go to their website!)

The main part of this recipe is easy. Toss your meat with the veggies, spices, and oil and then roast in the oven at 450 degrees, turning occasionally, until nice and crisped. (In truth, I turned it down a hair and cooked it longer, about 35 minutes)

The original recipe calls for Pork Tenderloin, but I have had this leg of lamb for a month now and have been trying to think of something to do with it. If you are using tenderloins, slice them into 1/2 inch thicknesses, if using lamb, cut away the fat and make do. It was hard to cube the leg into equal size pieces and there was a huge amount of fat and membrane to cut off and it made a big mess all over the counter. Pork tenderloins are much easier to work with! It was well worth it, however.

Toss your meat with a mix of hot and sweet sliced peppers, onions, a handful of mixed greens, your seasoning mix, and oil. The seasoning mix is allspice, coriander, cumin, paprika, salt, pepper, and garlic. Definitely a little exotic to the Western palate here, I only wish more American cooking used spices like these.

Now at this point, they, the authors, whom I usually listen with rapt attention to everything they say, tell us to toss with 1/4 cup good-tasting extra-virgin olive oil. In fact nearly every one of their recipes, be it a saute to a roasting to a salad all say use good-tasting, high-quality, extra-virign olive oil. I go on a sharp tangent from this belief.

A) Good olive oil is expensive. Half the time you can't even taste it with how the meal has been cooked.
B) You should NEVER, EVER bring extra-virgin olive oil to a high cooking temperature. It has a very low "smoking point" that makes it taste bad AND has the added danger of releasing carcinogens. Geez.

I usually cook with canola oil that can take a higher temperature. It has the added bonus of being less expensive than the olive oil I only use the extra-virgin olive oil for flavoring things that aren't cooked, like salad dressings, pesto, or adding a drizzle after something is done cooking to add more flavor. OK, I am done with my rant, back to the recipe.

While your meat is cooking, you can assemble the Turkish Almond Sauce.

First mix a minced clove of garlic and a few tablespoons of a minced sweet onion with 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar. Set this aside for 10 minutes. I think this is to mellow out the flavors.

Then you beat in 1/4 cup good-tasting extra-virgin olive oil until the sauce is creamy. (I stuck to this part as the olive oil is not cooked!) Then you add salt, pepper, one cup plain whole-milk yogurt, (I used non-fat and it still tasted fabulous. I think these people want us all to be fat.) a cup of coarse chopped almonds and chopped cilantro. The recipe says the cilantro is optional but I think it is essential. One can never have enough cilantro.

To serve, I made another recipe of the no-cook whole wheat couscous and set some cooked lamb mixture right on top and then a large portion of the almond sauce.

This dinner was excellent. The almond yogurt sauce with the olive oil and cilantro balanced perfectly with the gamy lamb and spicy, roasted veggies. And this time the couscous was good because the meat and the veggies and the sauce mixed in with everything. I will be trying this with pork very soon. if you don't like lamb, I know the pork will be just as good.

38 recipes down in How to Eat Supper.