Lunch - Septpember 4, 2009

This is Gazpacho Salad from The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas. This is the vegetarian cookbook that my mom had when I was growing up. I guess I nabbed her copy when I was in college. I recently purged my cookbooks but I held on to this one from 1972.

I added chickpeas to the salad to make it a meal. The recipe says to use firm tomatoes which would help limit all the extra liquid I had, but when you have ripe tomatoes you just can't pass them up. It is the nice dressing that makes this more than just chopped vegetables

I like chopping and I don't like turning on the stove so this is a good recipe for me. I have made a less soupy version of this for sharing at picnics.

Dinner - August 30, 2009

One more go on a favorite. This is from the recipe Chilled Tomato Soup, with Shallots, Cucumbers, and Corn from Berleys' Fresh Food Fast. I took this over to Kevin's to share for dinner.

I say taste your cucumber and if it is strong, reduce it. I think the corn can be upped a bit. I used red onion in place of the shallot because that is all I found at the market. The shallot adds a little complexity.

I made a double recipe and that served the three of us along side some grilled food with one serving left for lunch. The recipe says it serves 4 but that would be just a small cup.

Previous posts:
cold-soup-for-hot-weather
dinner-without-photos

Dinner - August 29, 2009

Some summer classics again.
Gazpacho. My previous post with the basil croutons can be found here. The recipe can be found at http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Shrimp-Gazpacho-with-Basil-Croutons-12647. This one lacks the croutons and the shrimp. I have been out of red wine vinegar all summer so I have been using sherry vinegar.

"Green Beans and Potatoes with Pesto". The recipe is from Jack Bishop's The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook. I used half yellow wax beans. You can find a previous post here.

The tomatoes and green beans are from my dad's garden. The rest of the ingredients (except for the olive oil and vinegar) are from the Hyde Park Farmers' Market.

Dinner - August 4, 2009

This is gazpacho with basil croutons. This was made from a recipe you can find on epicurious.com called Shrimp Gazpacho with Basil Croutons. I left out the shrimp and I used an excellent mild sour dough bread for the croutons.

You do not need to chop all the veggies up like the recipe says. The half that go in the food processor can just be chunked. This saves a lot of time but if you are going to make the croutons this might be hard to pull off after work and get everything to cool. I make it for weeknights but I have my system down.

Matt first made this gazpacho over 10 years ago and it is the standard for us.

Dinner - June 29, 2009

This meal could be called leftovers. We had a warm dish of red beans and rice along with a cold dish of cabbage salad.
This totally faked version of red beans and rice is not worth reporting. The beans were really not up to par.

The cabbage salad was quite edible if not stellar. It was also totally made up of what was left on hand. I think the nice touch on the cabbage salad was the addition of a granny smith apple. I put everything except the cabbage through the food processor. Below is the list of ingredients provided as a stepping off place for building a better salad next time.

Cabbage Salad
1 napa cabbage
1 bunch carrots
1 cuke
1 granny smith apple
1 bell pepper
1 jalapeño
1/2 cup red onion
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp rice vinegar
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp honey
Salt

The veggies were all local.

Dinner without Photos

The camera battery needed charged and I was too hungry to wait.

I tried the Chilled Tomato Soup with Shallots, Cucumbers, and Corn again from Berley's Fresh Food Fast (page 100). This time I made a half recipe and tried to just use a food mill. This didn't work and I had to dump the mess into the blender and then back to the food mill. So if you are making a whole recipe I suggest blending in two batches.

The soup was still good. I used a whole ear of corn for a half recipe and liked that. Again I didn't peel the cucumber but this one probably should have been.

I also made a side of pan grilled zucchini and summer squash. I cooked about 1.5 lbs sliced in long slabs lightly salted in 3 or 4 batches. In a separate pan I nearly caramelized a small red onion. I then returned all the squash to the pan with the onion and heated through. At the end I tossed in a small handful of chopped basil. The onion really helped this one out.

I had visions of staking these grilled slabs of squash into some sort of sculpture in the middle of my plate but I was hungry so I went for a pile next to the soup. It would have been a waste anyway since the camera was charging.

We indulged and had a little bit of bread with this meal which helped it feel more like a meal. I also had a glass of Moulin-a-Vent which while not really going with the meal is not a bad generic choice for food in general.

Cold Soup for Hot Weather

This week I went to an indoor produce market for most of my vegetables on Monday night called Pipkins. I had been up to Findlay Market on Saturday but it was too hot to do all my shopping. The meal we made last night was enough to tell me that Pipkins has some excellent vegetables.

We started the meal with Chilled Tomato Soup with Shallots, Cucumbers, and Corn from Berley's Fresh Food Fast (page 100). I actually used all the ingredients as listed since there was no oil and grains to try and weed out. In the herb options we went with all basil. I didn't peel the cucumber since we were using a thin skinned style.

As far as the procedure went we found that the tomatoes were too much to do in the food processor in one round. This we discovered after trying one round and getting tomato liquid all over the counter. We also found that a mesh strainer just held everything. We quickly reached for the food mill with good results. (The next time I did just try the food mill and found that you still needed some puree action prior. I was making a half recipe the second time so it fit in the blender then back through the food mill to remove the seeds.)

The results are a very tasty gazpacho like soup. The base showed off some excellent in season tomatoes and each bite was a pleasing mix of corn and basil. You really shouldn't make this soup any other time of year. I would say taste is a five and ease is a three.

We finished out the meal with some straight ahead bok choy. Started with Bishop's recipe for Braised Bok Choy with Plenty of Garlic from Vegetables Every Day (page 35). I only had 1.5 pounds from two small head so reduced the recipe accordingly. Also left out the oil and used water in place of the broth. We were quite happy to eat the bok choy but I won't be serving this simple preparation to guests. This particular batch of bok choy was low on greens. I will say taste two and prep three.

It took an hour and 25 minutes from start to table. This included some time in the middle to look up a bok choy recipe, clean up the kitchen, and enjoy some beer. We ate all the soup and all of the bok choy.