Friday Night Challenge: Fava Beans and Pork

Beans. Versatile, sustaining, filling, economical...and the centerpiece of this Friday Night Challenge. Here are the ingredients:

beans (my choice)     cilantro    sour cream   bacon   goat cheese

All the makings for a good, solid meal.

Fava beans were the choice. These dandies are some of the oldest beans in civilization...and also technically not beans. They're really peas, but they definitely qualify as beans, so we're going to run with that.... Fava beans have a nice, creamy texture and a bit of a nutty flavor. I used a canned version of them I found at an international market in Bloomington. (They may not be easily found in many more rural areas, so be on the lookout when you're out and about. They also grow well in the garden, so fresh would be even better!) I rinsed the beans, added a bit of water, and then put them on low heat. I added a bit of bacon grease to the beans. (The original plan was bacon, but when I priced it earlier in the week, it was $5 a pound; I bought a great pork roast for $2.19 lb...it won out.)

You can put the pork roast in the crock pot earlier in the day; it will cook into sublime tenderness with great flavor. It needs little else.

Back to the fava beans. Once they are warmed, add a mixture of finely diced cilantro to sour cream and fold that into the beans. As a final touch, add a couple of tablespoons of goat cheese crumbled to the mix and let it all get nicely and creamy.

A simple meal, and a sustaining one...and tasty!

Enjoy!

Friday Night Challenge: Shrimp Bisque with Capers

We're soup lovers here; anytime, any season. So when I saw the list of ingredients for the Friday Night Challenge
shrimp     onions      capers      squash     carrots
I started thinking a good shrimp bisque might be in order.


First get the squash started cooking. I used a butternut squash and cut it lengthwise. In a 425 degree oven, place the 2 pieces of the squash cut side down on a baking sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes until tender when pricked with a fork. Let cool until manageable and then peel the pulp away from the skins. Set aside.


When making the bisque, be sure to use raw shrimp. If you use the pre-cooked, the shrimp will get very tough very quickly. Raw shrimp is not always the easiest to find in this area, but you can usually find it frozen, which is perfectly fine. Run the package of frozen shrimp under lukewarm water until they start thawing; you can then remove the shell, tail, and mud vein (that little thread-like dark streak). 


While the shrimp is thawing, peel and dice 3 or 4 carrots and one medium onion and put into a pan  to cook with just a bit of butter and olive oil. Once it starts sweating, turn the heat down and cook until soft. Add the diced shrimp, the squash pulp, and 2 cups of chicken broth along with 1/2 t. ginger.Salt and pepper to taste. Let simmer until the shrimp is pink. Once it is cooled down a bit, add it in portions to a blender and puree. Place back in a pan. Once all is done, then put into soup bowls and add 1 t. capers to the center of each bowl. This is a good second-day soup; the shrimp flavor is enriched after it chills in the refrigerator overnight. Warm it back up, and you have a meal.


Enjoy!

Friday Night Challenge: Pizza Rolls for Grown-Ups

I like most things; however, some freezer items in grocery stores taste to me like so much cardboard and bad seasonings.
Take a pizza roll, for instance. I know there are probably legions of fans out there, but really? Dough with no body, seasonings that taste either over-processed or overly-garlicky. Ick.
When given the Friday Night Challenge of:
pizza crust    red peppers     basil    a choice of meat     fresh tomatoes
pizza rolls for grown-ups seemed a good choice.
I consulted the best for the crust: Dorie Greenspan's Baking with Julia book. In it is a great recipe for pizza dough--complete with sponge. I had never taken the time to make pizza dough from a sponge, but I certainly will from now on. The sponge acts as an intensifier. It allows the yeast to mix with just enough flour to really  get going. Later, you add the remainder of the flour. As a result, the dough does taste better. 
The recipe for the sponge and the dough is quite easy and follows:
Take 1 1/2 t. active yeast and add to 1 1/2 c.of tepid water. Stir lightly and let is set for around 5 minutes. Then add 2T. olive oil and stir in 2 1/4 c. flour a bit at a time until all is incorporated. Let rest for around 1 1/2 hours.Stir in 2 more cups of all-purpose flour along with 2 t. salt. Knead for around 6 minutes. Put into an oiled bowl and let rise again for around 1 1/2 hours. 
For the filling, crumble up some ham sausage (seems to cost less and tastes really good). Separately, chop up a green bell pepper (the plan was to buy a red bell pepper, but when I checked they were up to $1.75 a pepper! Green bells are plentiful in the garden, so they won out. I decided to not cook the tomatoes ahead of time, so I used LaRoma (what a great meaty tomato). For the basil, I took a little liberty and used pesto to get a little more intensity of taste.
So, once the dough was ready, I rolled it out, cut it with a pastry round into circles, slathered each piece with pesto, added the pepper and sausage, and then a raw tomato slice. Take two of the rounds and seal them together.  Bake them on a stone in a 450 degree oven for around 15 minutes.
Pizza rolls for grown ups. Enjoy!

      

Soup's On! Zucchini Chicken with Blue Cheese

It is the season of zucchini...tons of it. Lucky us! What more versatile vegetable? Good in cake, good in bread, good in soup. Here's a recipe that we sampled tonight...good and filling. 


Take 1 medium onion and chop into rough dice. Melt 2T butter in a pan and add the onion with 1t. olive oil. Cook until soft. Cut one large zucchini lengthwise, remove seeds, and roughly dice. Add 2t. of dried oregano and the zucchini to the onion and cook. After about 2 minutes, add 6 c. chicken broth. Let simmer until the zucchini is very soft. Add salt and pepper to taste. 


Carefully put the soup, a bit at a time, into a blender to make it smooth. Put the soup back into a pan and add 3 chicken breasts (already cooked) roughly diced, to the soup. Heat the soup to the desired temperature for serving.


After putting into a soup bowl, add a couple of teaspoons of blue cheese crumbles. The cheese will melt into the hot soup and make the flavor even richer.


Enjoy!

Buttered Bluegill in Parchment with Summer Squash

What a fantastic time of year--fresh vegetables arriving in the kitchen daily, fresh fish being caught. The Friday Night Challenge ingredients:

fish--bacon--asparagus--butter--lemon--summer squash

started me thinking about a process I recently saw in a Julia Child cookbook that uses parchment paper and high heat to assure that the fish cooks through without drying--a major downfall of fish, especially more delicate whitefish-types.

What follows is a relatively simple process for the meal:

Cook about 3 ounces of bacon cut into small pieces. Once it is about half finished, add fresh asparagus and a pat of butter. Add some small diced pieces of summer squash and let everything cook slowly. Add just a bit of lemon juice (about 1/4 t.).

Set the oven to 425 degrees. Prepare a piece of parchment paper with butter and lay the fish on  it along with some of the summer squash that is peeled with a vegetable peeler. Give it a pinch of salt and a squirt of lemon juice. Wrap tightly in the parchment and put on a shallow baking pan. Cook for around 15 minutes and check. The squash won't be overly tender; it will have texture.

While everything else is cooking and baking, peel and cut a cucumber into small bite-sized pieces. Give it a bit of salt and about 1/4t. dried dill. Let it set for a bit. Once the asparagus has cooked to doneness, remove it and the squash as well as about 1/2 of the bacon. Put the remainder of the bacon with the cucumber. Take the remaining bacon fat, add a touch of olive oil, a shake of salt, and a squirt of lemon juice and heat through. Pour over the cucumbers and coat.

Enjoy!

Olive-Egg Wraps Mediterranean Style

On one of my sojourns to my beloved gourmet Amish grocery in the area, I happened upon some Mediterranean grilling oil. Its combination of garlic, paprika, rosemary, lemon oil, and capsicun makes it a light oil with full-bodied flavors. So, as I was looking at the ingredients for the Friday Night Challenge

fried eggs---spinach---sun-dried tomatoes---olives---bacon

the salt aspect struck me as something that would work very well with the oil. And it did.

Cut the bacon slices into quarters so it can be crumbled it into big crumbles. Once it is fried crisp, put it in a strainer to dry it out. Pour off most of the bacon fat, give it a good blend of the Mediterranean grilling oil, and then add 6 lightly beaten eggs. Before the eggs set, add thinly sliced stuffed olives and let the egg set up to a texture that it can be used it as a wrap. Once finished, cut it in half and remove each half to a separate plate, having flipped it olive-side down. Add a bit of the bacon fat/grill oil back to the pan and saute 1/2 bag of baby spinach, allowing it to wilt to a rich green color.

While all this is going on, "sun dry" paper-thin slices of fresh tomatoes under a high-heat broiler with a touch of the grilling oil and a very generous amount of pepper. 

Once everything is finished, put a layer of bacon crumbled, a layer of spinach, and a layer of sun-dried tomatoes in each wrap and then turn it seam side under. Add the remaining sun-dried tomatoes to the top with the remaining bacon crumbles.

This will work for any meal, be it brunch, lunch, or supper. It has a great combination of flavors.

Enjoy!