the owl and the olive tree

I make no claims to authenticity for this recipe. I just like it.

It's both vegetarian and meat friendly, and, AFAIK, is also gluten-free friendly, as long as you use a gluten-free soy sauce. I think it's also kosher-friendly (but not vegan).

( Fried Rice, Totally Non-Authentic Style )

Snow day pot roast! Because I wanted something hot and hearty and comforting.

Not a proper recipe, but:

( snow day pot roast )

On Tuesday, I made roast duck with apple glaze for jmpava and bellwethr. The method was cobbled together from several recipes I found in Cook's Illustrated or online (and thank you for all of you who provided links!).

It came out quite nicely: crispy rendered skin, nice moist meat. The breast does wind up well-done rather than medium rare, but that was an acceptable trade off for the excellent skin.

It's not a particularly complicated recipe, but it does require a deep roasting pan that is stove-safe, and a bit of time.

At the end of this, you will have a roast duck's worth of duck meat, plus rendered duck fat, plus a quart or so of duck stock.

( Roast Duck with Apple Glaze )

I remembered that I was going to get pictures about ten minutes after we finished devouring the bird, so no pictures. But it was quite good!

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 was going to post the recipe for my linguini with sweet potato concasse, but the sweet potato concasse actually did not turn out all that well, so no-go, or at least not well enough for me to want to post it. If you're interested in hearing what I did and why it didn't work, though, let me know.

What did work out was the salmon with rhubarb sauce, which I will describe here!

The thought process behind it was that I wanted a sweet and sour-type sauce for the salmon, but I didn't want something with one of those really sticky-sugary sauces. A comment ceph had made a few months back, plus the realization that stewed rhubarb is usually both sweet and tart, led me to try this.

To give it a less dessert-y flavor, I used leeks as well as rhubarb—two small leeks (white and pale green only) to two large stalks of rhubarb. I'd say a ratio of about one part leek to two parts rhubarb.

I chopped up the leeks by splitting the stalk and then cutting it into half-moons, then rinsed thoroughly to get all the grit out. Then I heated about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a pot over medium-high heat and cooked, stirring constantly, for about five minutes. Turned down the heat and added a pinch of salt, and let sweat until the whites were translucent and soft but not starting to brown yet.

I chopped up the rhubarb into smallish pieces and threw it into the pot along with the leeks, let the whole thing sweat about five minutes more, then covered with water and added a smidge more salt and a tablespoon of sugar. Then I simmered the hell out of the whole thing for, like, an hour, stirring very occasionally and reading a book in the meantime. (It was a very low simmer, but if the pot starts to get dry, add more water.)

Once the rhubarb has softened to the point where it's pretty much falling apart in the water, give it a taste and adjust seasonings. You will probably want more sugar, although if you like things sour/astringent, you might not. You may want more salt. You may decide that a pinch (or more than a pinch) of cayenne, or a few drops (or more than a few drops) of Sriracha, will make it even better. Or a squirt of lemon juice. Or a grind of cinnamon. Or a splash of sesame oil. Or whatever sounds good!

I served it over poached salmon, but I think it would also be lovely over fried tofu, or grilled chicken breast, or anywhere else a nice, not-too-sticky sweet and sour sauce would be appropriate.

Thought I'd put up one of my quick and easy go-to recipes.

I'm pretty sure I stole this recipe from greensleeves_ years and years ago. It takes only a handful of inexpensive ingredients, ten minutes of prep time, and thirty minutes of baking time. And you can dress it up or down.

It's so simple that it's not even really a recipe, and I'm a little embarrassed to post it. But I really like it! And it's easy! So.

( Spaghetti Bake )

I'm making it tonight with a very simple red sauce, whole-wheat spaghetti, mozzarella and parmesan. Yum.

When I mentioned buying cranberry beans for my cranberry beans and rice dish, vom_marlowe asked for my recipe. So here it is! Coincidentally, I'm also making it tonight.

Beans and rice (of which cranberry beans is one of my very favorite variants, although you could sub in dried black or kidney beans if you don't have cranberry beans handy) is one of those dishes that I have made so often I can make it on instinct—my family growing up ate various bean and rice dishes often, since we liked them and they're inexpensive, and then when I was in college I made them whenever I had a stove, because, again, cheap and tasty and filling.

Because I've made it so often, it's also one of the dishes that I make without a recipe, by ear, adjusted for what I happen to have, or not have, in the pantry. So the recipe has a lot of 'if you happen to have this, then use it; otherwise, use this other thing.' It's a good recipe to play with to suit your own taste.

It can be made with meat (although the meat amount is pretty light even so) or vegetarian, or, as I am making it today, vegetarian with meat on the side, to be added by those who like it.

( Cranberry Beans and Rice )

Parsnips with lemon-butter, warm German potato salad, and salmon mi-cuit. With pictures.

Also, a dose of personal nostalgia. ;)

( food neep beneath the cut )

(It's been feeling really weird to write these -- I've been so pleased with the sous vide, which makes me excited and I want to share it, but the only way I can really do that is to talk about how well the food has come out, which basically means squeeing about my own dishes. Which feels awkwardly self-congratulatory! But the sous vide supreme really is pretty darn awesome, and a lot of the amazing things -- like the super-juiciness of the meat dishes, and the way the flavors meld -- are more it than me.)