the owl and the olive tree

I decided not to call this 'pasta e fagioli' because I basically took the idea of 'pasta with beans' and did what I wanted with it.

It's also not properly a recipe because, frankly, the amounts and ingredients don't matter all that much. So I wrote it up in a 'if you have some of this, throw it in, and if you have some of that, throw it in, and then cook it until it smells good' way.

I made this "meat-light" (one slice of bacon for flavor), but it could be easily made meatless, and I included adjustments if you want to go that way. I'm pretty sure, if you do it vegetarian, it's also vegan.

( Pasta with Fresh Beans )

No pics this time, because, uh, we ate it too fast. Which does say something, I guess!

Fish a la meuniére literally means "fish in the style of the female miller," sometimes interpreted "miller's wife:" simply put, it's fish rolled in flour and then fried in butter, then sauced with butter, lemon and parsley. Named, I guess, on the principle that the miller has plenty of flour. Anyway, it's a simple sauce. As I understand it, it can be made with pretty much any kind of fish, although I would stick to milder-flavored fish as opposed to, say, tuna. We used rainbow trout, partly because it's generally considered to be sustainable.

Anyway, the recipe itself was easy. The difficult part was actually filleting the trout. (I usually buy my fish pre-filleted, but I'm experimenting more with breaking down whole fish.) It took some poking and experimenting, but I got the fish filleted, and only one piece (of four) was noticeably bony. Yay!

( Trout Meuniere )

So I wanted some kind of starch to go with the fish, and we had some red potatoes, so. And then I remembered something I read in Cook's Illustrated (I think), a way of cooking potatoes in water that is ludicrously heavily salted. The potatoes wind up nicely seasoned rather than too salty, and with a very silky, creamy interior. So I tried it. And sure enough, it worked as directed! The potatoes ended up beautifully seasoned without being too salty, and with a smooth and creamy interior that wasn't quite like any other red potatoes I'd ever had. A bit of googling indicates that these are Syracuse Salt Potatoes, and they're very easy and very good.

( Syracuse Salt Potatoes )

This is what I made for dinner tonight. It was a Saturday dinner for a guest, and so it's got some of the "stupidly complex" about some of the steps, but, eh.

The dutch oven chicken is adapted from a Cook's Illustrated recipe, as is the salad. The watermelon is a fairly standard recipe, but the direct inspiration was from Vegetarian Times.

The tomato and etc. salad is vegetarian but not vegan; the minted watermelon is vegan.

( Dutch Oven Lemon-Garlic Chicken )

( Tomato, Cucumber and Etc. Salad )

( Minted Watermelon )

...well, fresh except for the roasted red peppers. And no cooking required except for the pasta itself.

Vegetarian; vegan if you leave off the cheese.

( Summer pasta sauce )

I'm in search of recommendations for Japanese cookbooks (or food memoirs, or other cuisine-related literature.)

I already have Washoku (a cookbook focused on traditional Japanese home cooking, and one of my favorite cookbooks of any type), Morimoto (a cookbook by the Iron Chef, focused on super-fine-cuisine from a Japanese tradition, not so much the kind of thing you'd make for an everyday dinner), The Manga Cookbook (exactly what it says on the tin), and all the current English-translated volumes of Oishinbo (not a cookbook but a food-culture manga, which I love with a tremendous passion and need to write up one of these days because it's AWESOME).

Indeed, it's Oishinbo that lead me to seek out more writing on Japanese cuisine, because it's not a cookbook. So if you (as I do) want to recreate some of the things eaten in the manga issues, you have to have outside sources to look to. Washoku has been invaluable, but I'd like more!

I don't have a strong preference as to whether the books are cookbooks per se or more general food writing/food memoirs. I'm also interested in all genres of Japanese food, so no particular preferences there. (Well, the food I'm least likely to make at home is sushi/sashimi, but even so a good sushi reference or two would be quite interesting.) Any level of technical proficiency is fine, too: very basic books would be good for teaching me the basics of Japanese cooking (I'm not a novice cook but I am a novice at Japanese food), and more difficult/ambitious books are something to strive for!

I do have a slight preference for books written by Japanese authors. (As long as there's an English translation available.) Second-choice is books written by people who have lived for some time in Japan. (Washoku's author is actually not Japanese, but she is married to a Japanese man and lived in the country for many years.) Books by people who are neither Japanese nor have lived in Japan would come third.

Anyway. Any suggestions?

It may not be haute cuisine, but mashing Laughing Cow creamy swiss wedges into mashed potatoes makes them taste delicious. I'm adding that to my regular repertoire.

(Dinner: ribeye steak, sous vided and finished in a pan with butter, plus a white wine pan sauce; garlic-cheese mashed potatoes. Sometimes I'm just in the moood for meat'n'potatoes.)

Two summer dishes, both of which tasted good and were well-received by the boy (especially the salad, which he loooooooooooved).

The salad was made of:

• Butter lettuce
• Romaine lettuce
• Halved cherry tomatoes
• Quartered red cherries
• Lightly pickled spring onions
• Radishes
• Smoked chicken
• Toasted walnuts
• Grilled asparagus, chilled
• Lemon-based vinaigrette (lemongrette?)

(Prepared like a salad: everything cut or torn into bite-sized pieces and washed well, dried well so that the dressing would stick, then tossed with the vinaigrette and served immediately to prevent it getting soggy.)

The soup was made of:

• Homemade vegetable broth (chicken broth would also work)
• A medium onion
• A celery stalk
• A couple of cloves of garlic
• Salt
• Pepper
• A white potato
• A head of kale
• A can of diced tomatoes
• Two baby zucchini
• A handful of cherry tomatoes
• Juice of a lemon
• Fresh thyme

(Prepared in fairly standard soup fashion: sautee the aromatics with the salt and pepper until the onion is soft; add the liquid; add the kale, potato, and tomatoes; when the potatoes are almost soft, add the zucchini and cherry tomatoes; when the zucchini is palatably soft, add the lemon juice and thyme and serve.)

This is probably the best roast or grilled whole chicken I've ever made, and that was a first, experimental run. I can't wait to try it again and fine tune, but... delicious.

The boy approved, too. (In fact, we picked the chicken carcass totally clean. Like vultures. Vultures who appreciate fruitwood smoke.)

This recipe has no quantities, because I was experimenting and did not keep track. It does have the method, though. (In brief: chicken brined in a flavorful brine, basted in a lemon-olive-oil-shallot sauce, then slowly grilled with soaked wood chips for smoke.)

The method is largely copped from Cooks Illustrated.

( Gas Grill-Smoked Lemon-Thyme Chicken )

Should you have beautiful seasonal arugula*, fresh and crisp and peppery, you should find some fresh, crisp, peppery use for it, like perhaps salad, and ignore me.

* - Or watercress, or mustard green, or sorrel, or other flavorful green.

However.

Should you forget about your beautiful seasonal arugula until it gets a little wilty—not bad, mind you, but a far cry from crisp—you might do this:

Boil up some pasta, whatever kind you like.

Slice some garlic, as much as looks good to you (for me, the vampire-proof woman, half a head), and soften with a bit of salt and a few good pinches of red pepper flakes in olive oil, over medium-high heat.

Add a glug of white wine and simmer until it reduces to a syrupy liquid, or, if you don't know what 'syrupy liquid' means, until there's still some liquid in the pot but barely.

Coarsely chop your somewhat sad-looking arugula or other assertive green, and drop in the liquid. Let cook until thoroughly wilted.

Throw in the cooked pasta. Add a knob of butter and a grating of hard cheese. (Parmesan and aged gouda both work well, but this is not a dish that is likely to be picky, so try whatever you have on hand.) Stir well.

If you have a bit of lemon, squeeze it over the top. If you don't, don't.