Chicken with Piperade

Monday 15 October

There was a 7 PM lecture at the Museum Center tonight, so a simple trick with leftover chicken was in order.  Sliced and fried up a giant red bell pepper and some red and white onions, and then let them simmer with wedges of 4 or 5 little paisano plum tomatoes.  Reheated the chicken leg quarters in the savory piperade, and snap, we were ready to dine.

Orecchiette with Beet Greens

Sunday 14 October

Yesterday we bought some fresh red beets, with their greens of course, from the nice people from Fair Ridge Farms at Findlay Market.  They asked if we intended to use the greens, and when we said "of course," they reached into a bin, pulled out another big bunch of greens sans beets, and said "take these as well."  Apparently some bozos asked them to cut the greens off, not realizing that beet greens are as tasty as beets, in their own way.

To use them all, we cooked up this recipe we'd done once from the Chez Panisse cookbook; but this time for pasta as originally intended, not as a side dish.

We did tinker with the recipe a bit: toasted a couple of Tablespoons of pignoli in the dry pan first, set them aside, and added them to the beet greens as a final touch of crunch.  Also, the boiling pasta water served both to soften the raisins and dress the beet greens.

Orecchiete turned out to be a great pasta for this, despite the fact that they look embarrassingly like cervical caps.  Though they have a tendency to nest on one another, they still cook pretty thoroughly in twelve minutes; and when tossed with the beet greens, they turned nice and pink.

The result was nutty and sweet with beet, sort of Sicilian in savor.  Definitely a beet-green keeper.

Roast Chicken with Mushroom Cream Sauce

Saturday 13 October

We started with a bit of a lunchtime treat: BLT napoleons, or three thick slices of bag-ripened purple cherokee and pink brandywine tomatoes slathered with arugula goat cheese spread, arugula, and bits of bacon. 

Dinner was a touch more classic.  We roasted a chicken, and served it with a sauce of sautéed shallot, mushrooms, chervil, and tarragon, doused with some heavy cream and bubbled until thick.  Inspired by Julia Child's tarragon sauce, so very French.

Albacore en Papillote

Friday 12 October

We're still using, and tweaking, this favorite recipe. 

For it, we sacrificed another of our precious garden fennels, again only after Dora had played with it thoroughly, and shaved it thin; then blanched it, a couple of sliced potatoes, and a sliced carrot.  Oh, and got out two albacore tuna steaks (frozen and defrosted from Trader Joe's) instead of our usual 'ahi, because they're more forgiving about being served less than completely rare.  

Minced a couple of cloves of garlic, zested a lemon, sliced some green (for a change) olives, got out the big bottle of capers, and chopped up some lemon thyme.  Then we tossed the potato with some oil, half the garlic, salt and pepper; and the fennel and carrot with the rest of the garlic, zest, olives, capers, thyme, and more oil, salt, and pepper.  Then we piled up the vegetables below, and on top of, the fish, on two sheets of parchment, sealed both, and baked in a 400º oven. 

But FIFTEEN MINUTES IS ENOUGH for the fish to be done.  And we really liked it with the briny green olive and caper flavor.

Pork Tenderloins and Root Vegetable Mash

Thursday 11 October

We had a fair amount of root vedge left over from Tuesday before last's pot roast.  What's more, the parsnip batons had remained tough and resilient, probably because we'd braised it rather than dry-roasting (which makes it instantly tender) and cut it into batons rather than discs (thus preserving the long fibers).  

The solution was to throw all the vedge into a pot and reheat it with chicken broth, mashing it gently until it was all combined and tender, then mushing in a dollop of heavy cream and suitable doses of salt and pepper.

As a protein, we pan-fried a couple of thick-cut salted and thymed pork medallions; and when they were just done, deglazed the pan with Marsala, a touch of balsamic, and a shower of dried cranberries, for seasonal sweet and sour flavors.

Thai Green Curry Chicken

Wednesday 10 October

Yet another vedge variation on our basic Thai green curry.

The vedge in question consisted of onions, red bell pepper, and a few last purple bush beans from the garden.  Oh, and in the last 5 minutes, some frozen little green peas went in to add a splash of flavor and color.

We showered the end product with the last of our purple ruffles basil leaves (hard frost is predicted for tonight), and stuck in a spike of basil flower for prettiness' sake.