Busy weekend + fridge raid = quick lunch

A quick improvised lunch with chickpeas, couscous and pork. Recipe below.

Last weekend was action-packed, even by our standards. On top of all the standard issue weekend errands and household stuff, we were preparing for an upcoming camping trip [although not nearly enough]. Marion was attending a four-day convention that had me shuttling back and forth to McCormick Place at odd hours—well, and joining her and other attendees for impromptu cocktails. Friday night found our living and dining rooms converted to dorms for four nice young men from Michigan who were attending Lollapalooza.

Oh. And Sunday afternoon, we managed to make a small contribution to the record-breaking $70.2 million the amazingly exciting Bourne Ultimatum took in over the weekend.

In the midst of all this, it was hard enough to even schedule meals, let alone get them on the table. Friday night I expected to be fending for myself, but suddenly had both Marion and daughter Laurel at home. So after a smash-and-grab run to the grocery store, I threw together a quick dinner—sautéed pork chops with bowtie pasta and mushrooms in a brandy sauce and a salad on the side. Must have been okay. We inhaled it.

Early Saturday afternoon, the polite young Michiganders grabbed their backpacks and with a final thanks, headed back to the Eastern Time Zone. Suddenly, it was just Laurel and me, and we were hungry. We had a passel of errands to run, so I’ll admit my first thought was some kind of fast food take-out. But we do more of that than I care for already, so I decided to see just how fast I could throw something together with what we had on hand.

I had recently made a nice, spicy side dish based on something I’d seen at Toni’s blog Daily Bread Journal. She had combined couscous with chickpeas [or garbanzo beans, as she called them], along with some veggies and spices, into a hearty backdrop for leftover osso buco. I had always treated couscous as a standalone side dish, enhanced with parsley or arugula or sautéed garlic, perhaps, but strictly a solo act. The idea of casting couscous in a supporting role was a revelation to me.

My version of Toni’s dish, made with onion, garlic, a jalapeño pepper and cumin, sounded like a good starting point. So I grabbed a can of chickpeas and some couscous from the pantry, then raided the fridge. Onion, check. Garlic, check. While failing to find the jalapeño pepper that I’m sure is still lurking there, I uncovered a small zucchini and half a red bell pepper. This was beginning to sound interesting. Then I remembered the lone uncooked pork chop, left over from the four pack bought for the previous night’s dinner. Cayenne pepper stood in for the fugitive jalapeño. Here’s how all that became lunch. Continue reading “Busy weekend + fridge raid = quick lunch” →

A cool, quick summer night dinner: Pasta Shells with Italian Tuna and Artichokes

All you cook is the pasta for Pasta Shells with Italian Tuna and Artichokes. Recipe below.

I first posted this recipe over at Patricia’s Technicolor Kitchen in May. She had done a delicious Brazilian Rice and Beans dish here at Blue Kitchen, and this was my chance to return the favor. Now that we’re in the thick of summer heat and other excuses to avoid the kitchen, I thought it was worth repeating here.

This one of my summer favorites—a quick, colorful pasta that makes a great lunch or light supper. The only thing you cook is the pasta, so the kitchen doesn’t get too hot. It’s also another great example of just how versatile pasta can be once you think beyond red sauce.

In Italy, a no-cook pasta sauce like this is called a salsa cruda. The room temperature sauce slightly cools the cooked pasta, and the pasta slightly warms the sauce, making for a meal that feels less heavy than many pasta dishes. The shells catch bits of tuna and the other ingredients, delivering big taste with each bite.

There are so many wonderful flavors at play in this dish too—garlic, lemon, parsley, tuna, artichoke hearts… and my favorite, the briny tang of the capers. They combine for a fresh, bright meal that just tastes like summer. In fact, I’ve been known to make it as a winter lunch for that very reason.

A note about the tuna. For this dish, bring out the good stuff—quality tuna packed in olive oil. The olive oil becomes part of the sauce. I use a brand imported from Italy. As you can see in the photo, the quality of the flesh is far superior to the ground-up mush you often find in canned tuna. Spain also produces excellent olive oil-packed tuna, so whichever you can find locally will work. Continue reading “A cool, quick summer night dinner: Pasta Shells with Italian Tuna and Artichokes” →

Iberia meets Italia—for dinner

Pork Chops with Paprika and Fennel Seeds combine favorite flavors of Spain and Italy. Recipe below.

My friend Stan went to Spain last year. After he got back, the first thing I asked him about was the food, of course. He said that most restaurants offered pork, pork and more pork. Stan is Jewish, so he would notice this sort of thing.

To be fair, he did find other things to eat in Spain [and as he admitted to me later, did finally succumb to the delights of pig meat in his travels]. But Spanish cuisine does embrace meat in general and pork in particular, in all its forms, both fresh and cured. The small, dense Spanish chorizo sausages, a completely different, um, animal from the Mexican variety, are wonderfully intense. I know I’ll feature them in at least one upcoming post.

And to flavor all this meaty goodness? Paprika, of course. Paprika [or pimentón, as it’s known in Spain] is one of the essential ingredients of Spanish cuisine. It is made from ground aromatic sweet red peppers and ranges in flavor from mild to hot and in color from bright orange-red to blood red. Originally from the Americas, most commercial paprika now comes from Spain, South America, California and Hungary.

The Italians are no slouches in the consumption of pork either. And for them, one spice of choice for combining with it is fennel seeds. If you doubt this for a moment, just wait ’til the fennel seeds hit the hot skillet—you will smell the essence of Italian pork sausage. Fennel seeds have been compared to anise, but while they do have a big flavor, it’s not as pronounced in its licorice flavor as anise.

In this recipe, paprika and fennel come together to deliver a nice, subtle complexity in a quick, easy-to-make main course. Continue reading “Iberia meets Italia—for dinner” →

Chicken and Wine: An evolutionary tale

Herbes de Provence adds a nice complexity to my current version of Chicken and Wine. Recipe below.

No, the title doesn’t refer to the theory—still hotly debated, apparently—that birds evolved from dinosaurs [although the thought of dining on a dinosaur’s distant relative is pretty cool, you have to admit]. It has to do with how cooking and recipes naturally evolve over time.

This recipe is one I’ve made pretty much since I began cooking. And just as my cooking has, it’s evolved and become a little more refined, a little more complex over time. So it’s fitting it should be the very first recipe on Blue Kitchen.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with cooking times, tweaked the herbs and messed with the sauce in various efforts to freshen up a meal that family and friends already loved. There’ve been a couple notable failures: Adding chicken stock to the sauce for more flavor—the flavor it added was chicken soup. And adding a little dried thyme—everyone agreed the “thymeless classic” was better.

There has also been a notable success in the last couple of years: Adding Herbes de Provence, a wonderfully aromatic blend of [typically dried] herbs and lavender flowers used in the cuisine of the Provence region of the south of France. The mix of herbs varies—the blend I use contains rosemary, French thyme, tarragon, basil, savory, cracked fennel, lavender and marjoram. This simple addition gives the dish a complexity the bay leaves alone couldn’t deliver.

Chicken and Wine, as I prepare it, is quite distinct from the classic French coq au vin. It uses white wine instead of red, for one thing, and the cooking time is much shorter; coq au vin pretty much demands to be cooked a day ahead and allowed to swap flavors in the fridge overnight. This dish is best when served immediately after cooking.

There’s a comfort food aspect to this dish that makes it a great family meal. But it also has a kind of rustic elegance that makes it good company food too. So here’s the recipe—at least how I’m making it right now. Continue reading “Chicken and Wine: An evolutionary tale” →