Orzo Salad with Lemon, Mint and Ricotta Salata

 

We’ve been up to our eyeballs in a bathroom remodel over here—more on that to come—but we’ve also found a little time to eat dinner, too. I’ve made this wonderfully light and refreshing orzo salad a couple times in the past few weeks. It’s great with grilled fish or roast chicken, and is an old favorite recipe from Dean and Deluca. I can just tell it’s going to be making the scene all summer.

Orzo Salad with Lemon, Mint and Ricotta Salata

From Dean and Deluca

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup minced shallots
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest, or more to taste
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup uncooked orzo
1/2 cup very finely diced yellow bell pepper
1/2 cup very finely diced seedless cucumber
1/2 cup crumbled ricotta salata cheese (about 3 ounces)
3 tablespoons minced fresh mint leaves

Stir together the olive oil, shallots, lemon juice, garlic, and lemon zest in a small bowl. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Cook the orzo in a large kettle of boiling salted water until al dente. Drain pasta completely in a colander, running under cold water. Transfer orzo to a bowl, stir in the olive oil mixture, and let cool. Stir in the bell pepper, cucumber, ricotta salata, and mint until combined well. You could serve the salad immediately, but we think it tastes best if you let it stand at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours.

 

Leftover Mashed Potato Pancakes

 

It’s a toss up between Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for my favorite family meal of the year. For Christmas we start off with caviar and smoked trout and then move into a prime rib with Yorkshire pudding and mashed potatoes, followed by trifle. Go big, or go home. For the mashed potatoes I’m giddy when we’ve made enough to use for leftover mashed potato pancakes. My dad puts chives in his mashed potatoes, but if yours are without, do add some fresh chives to the pancake batter. Or, for a cheesy option, sprinkle some grated pecorino into the mix. These savory pancakes can be sweetened up for kiddie appetites with a spoonful of applesauce, though I prefer them with a dollop of crème fraîche.

Leftover Mashed Potato Pancakes

Makes 8 pancakes

2 cups leftover mashed potatoes

2 eggs

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons butter

crème fraîche or applesauce, optional, to garnish

In a bowl, mix together mashed potatoes, eggs, flour and salt and pepper until smooth. Heat butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat, and using a 1/4 cup measure drop batter into 8 rounds into the pan and flatten slightly with spatula. (Depending on size of skillet, you may need to do this in two batches.)

 

Fry pancakes about 4 minutes until bottoms are golden and crispy, and then flip with spatula. Fry an additional 4-5 minutes until crispy and golden. Drain on paper towels and serve with either crème fraîche or applesauce.

Lemony Green Bean Salad with Feta, Red Onion and Marjoram

 

I swear that I’m not on the Food52.com payroll. I’m just a woman obsessed. Food52′s Lemony Green Bean Salad with Feta, Red Onion and Marjoram is the latest gospel I’m preaching. I love any dish that’s heavy on lemon zest since we have a prolific lemon tree in the back yard just begging to be zested into action.

 

I’ve been making this simple green bean salad once a week all summer, and it is fabulous with everything from grilled pork chops to burgers to roast chicken or on its own as the main event for lunch. It takes only a few minutes to prepare—four minutes to cook the green beans (though I like mine a little crunchier so I throw them in for two minutes), during which time you can slice some red onion and crumble a little feta. For the recipe, click HERE.

Green Goddess Grilled Cheese

For Father’s Day, we got my husband a new DeLonghi panini press and for our maiden voyage decided to christen it with Green Goddess Grilled Cheese—a sandwich that includes three of my favorite things: cheese, tarragon, anchovy. I can’t tell you what a winning combo this is—the combination of oozy cheeses with the tangy Green Goddess goodness will have to speak for itself. I believe the original inspiration for this sandwich comes from the Panini Happy blog, but we threw ours together using what we had in the fridge. I grabbed some basil, tarragon, chives and Italian parsley from the back yard.

I threw that in the mini Cuisinart along with some chopped shallots, minced garlic and a generous squirt of anchovy paste. I prefer to use the paste because you can keep a tube on hand at all times and you don’t have to worry about those pesky little anchovy bones from the tinned variety.

I added a splash of white wine vinegar along with a few ounces of crème fraîche, although you could also use sour cream, and then gave it a whir.

Don’t worry about adding any salt—the anchovy paste will take care of that. The herb mixture then went into a bowl with grated cheddar and mozzarella cheeses and then generously spread on slices of whole wheat. Fresh sourdough would have been far better.

We then brushed the sandwiches with a little olive oil and put them into the press for about six or seven minutes they reached melted perfection. We gobbled them up in seconds flat. And then my husband made himself another… Happy Father’s Day!

The Foodinista’s Green Goddess Grilled Cheese

Makes 4 sandwiches

1 tablespoon chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon chopped basil

1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley

1 tablespoon chopped chives

1 large garlic clove, minced

1 tablespoon minced shallot

1 teaspoon anchovy paste

2 teaspoons white wine vinegar

3-4 ounces crème fraîche

1 cup grated cheddar

1 cup grated mozzarella

8 slices of sourdough bread (or favorite sliced bread)

Olive oil

Heat panini press to medium. Meanwhile, add first 9 ingredients to the bowl of a mini food processor and pulse to blend. In a separate bowl, add cheeses and herb mixture. Mix to combine. Lay out bread and top four slices with about 1/2 cup of mixture each. Cover with remaining four slices. Brush bread with olive oil. Grill in panini press for 6-7 minutes, or until cheese has melted.

Soft Scrambled Eggs with Ricotta

Last week we had a big magazine photo shoot at our house and my former Bon Appétit colleague Jeanne Kelley styled the food. She brought along some eggs from her chickens and after the shoot was over, she left a bowlful for me…

…including one of her chicken’s palest blue eggs, which are the subject of Jeanne’s award-winnning cookbook, Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes.

Jonathan Gold has said “Jeanne Kelley is not like you and me … the eggs laid by her chickens could blind you if you looked directly into the yolk.” He’s not kidding.

With eggs this fresh, it’s best to do as little as possible. I heated up a tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium heat. I whisked the eggs with a little salt and some chives snipped from our garden, and then when the butter was bubbly poured the eggs into the pan, tilting the pan occasionally to let the runny parts slowly cook.

After a couple minutes, when the eggs were just barely cooked, I removed from heat and folded in some fresh ricotta and sprinkled with fleur de sel. There is nothing quite like a perfectly scrambled egg, particularly if it was laid by one of Jeanne’s chickens.

Roasted Curried Cauliflower

This past month, I’ve only been able to handle cooking if it is super-duper easy. My current go-to side dish is this roasted curried cauliflower, a riff on a favorite from A.O.C. restaurant in Los Angeles. I serve this alongside brown rice and chicken cooked in an Indian Life Tikka Masala simmer sauce from Whole Foods. (I prefer the Indian Life brand to Seeds of Change.)

The simmer sauce is a far cry from the sublime (and involved) Chicken Tikka Masala I loved making pre-pregnancy, and someday I’ll hopefully have enough energy to return to cooking good Indian, but in the meantime, at 9 months pregnant, opening a jar is fine by me.

But back to the cauliflower. I promise you this dish will be a grand slam at the dinner table. There is so much flavor and comfort, which seems particularly surprising given how easy it is to make. Let me know what you think!

Roasted Curried Cauliflower

1 head cauliflower florets (preferably orange cauliflower if you can find it)

1 medium yellow onion, quartered

3 teaspoons curry powder

3 teaspoons smoked Spanish paprika

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 1/2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

Preheat oven to 450°F. Place cauliflower florets and onion in large roasting pan. In a bowl, whisk together spices, salt, oil and vinegar. Pour dressing over vegetables; toss to coat. Spread vegetables in single layer in pan.

Roast vegetables until tender, stirring occasionally, about 35 minutes. Serve.

Penne alla Vodka

If there is one dish that is dreadfully out of fashion that I unapologetically adore, it’s penne all vodka. Yes, that’s vodka pink sauce my friends and no, it is not 1972. I love Lidia Bastianich’s version, which includes a hit of heat from crush red pepper. Go liberal on that. And, if you’re feeling like you need to class up the joint, serve with a smoky, smooth bottle of 2009 Uccelliera Rosso di Montalcino ($30) from Tuscany, available at Larchmont Village Wine & Spirits and BevMo.

 

Zucchini Soup

Los Angeles can’t decide if it’s autumn or summer—this past week has seen everything from torrential downpour to 90-degree weather. The farmers markets are clearly in the summer camp. We’re still getting tomatoes, zucchini, strawberries and corn. Even peaches! I had quite a bit of zucchini left over from my CSA farm bag this week and remembered a soup I used to make from a recipe I pulled from the San Francisco Chronicle over a decade ago. It is quite simply delicious—the perfect amount of tangy-savory with a little hit of cinnamon sweet. I hope you enjoy, too, whether it’s rain or shine.

Zucchini Soup

1 lb zucchini, chopped in large pieces

2 cups of low sodium chicken stock

2/3 cup chopped yellow onion

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon olive oil

2/3 cup lowfat buttermilk

Salt, to taste

Garnish with chopped cilantro (optional)

In a pot, bring zucchini and chicken stock to boil. Allow to simmer, covered, for 6-8 minutes, or until zucchini is soft. Meanwhile, in a frying pan, sauté onion, cumin and cinnamon in  olive oil until onions are soft. In a blender, puree zucchini and stock with onions. Return to pot and stir in buttermilk. Garnish with cilantro

 

 

 

 

 

Onion and Gruyère Tart

Months ago, I promised the recipe for a superfast Onion and Gruyère Tart—a promise on which I am finally making good. Increasingly I find myself pulling dinner together at the eleventh hour, and puff pastry is my secret weapon. For this recipe, a quickie riff on Suzanne Goin’s Alsatian tart flambé, you basically need a sheet of puff pastry, a yellow onion, some creme fraîche, ricotta, Gruyère and some sort of fat—like bacon or chopped up olives. It takes about 10 minutes to assemble (the lion’s share of which is grating cheese/slicing onions), and another 20-25 to bake.

1 sheet frozen all-butter puff pastry, defrosted

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons oilve oil

1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

1/4 cup pitted cured olives (substitute: bacon for more traditional tart)

1/2 cup fresh ricotta

1/4 cup crème fraîche

1 cup grated Gruyère

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Unroll puff pastry sheet onto parchment-lined baking sheet.

Mix one egg yolk with 1/2 teaspoon of water and brush egg wash around borders.

Add 1 tablespoon olive oil to skillet, and heat over medium flame. Add onions and rosemary (and bacon if using), and cook until onions are tender, about five minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a food processor, purée together ricotta, remaining egg yolk, remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Fold in crème fraîche and a pinch of salt and pepper. Spread mixture over puff pastry. Sprinkle Gruyère over ricotta mixture. Using a slotted spoon, top with onions mixture and sprinkle olives over, if using.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, rotating baking sheet once, until cheese is bubbling and crust is golden.

Lemon-Rosemary White Bean Dip

I keep a couple of cans of cannelini beans on hand at all times in case of impromptu cocktails with friends or neighbors. This simple no-cook recipe for Rosemary-Lemon White Bean Dip comes from Lidia Bastianich, and takes less than 10 minutes to prepare. The secret is lemon zest.

Any leftover dip is fantastic the next day, thickly spread on good bread with roasted peppers or tuna.