Cod Fillets in a Red Curry Sauce

The last of the garden tomatoes are sitting on counters all over the Northeast. Looking for something tasty to do with them ? I'm suggesting a spin on a Madhur Jaffrey recipe that takes tomatoes, onion, garlic, curry spices and transforms all into a soft, chunky, and spicy hot curry sauce. Jaffrey takes that sauce and uses it to form a base for spice-rubbed cod fillets. Her recipe calls for the dry rub marinade that sits on the fillets for half an hour. Then, the fish is quick fried on both sides to crisp the outer surface. The fish is then laid atop the red curry sauce to finish in a hot oven.

Chicken Satay ! Peanut Dipping Sauce ! Cucumber Relish ! Oh, my !

 

Yes, Spring is very much on my mind these days ! Yes, I am having a crisis of seasonal fatigue when it comes to winter weather ! Yes, I have bridled under the yoke of a late winter infection that laid me low ! Yes, I am ready for some fresh tangy food that wakes up the taste buds and zaps my kitchen routine out of the late winter casseroles, soups, and heavy braising.

The Little House Cooking Club - Maple Sugaring !

"Every day Grandpa puts on his boots and his warm coat and his fur cap and he goes out into the snowy woods and gathers the sap. With a barrel on a sled, he drives from tree to tree and empties the sap from the buckets into the barrel. Then, he hauls it to a big iron kettle that hangs by a chain from a cross timber between two trees. 

"He empties the sap into the iron kettle. There is a big bonfire under the kettle, and the sap boils, and Grandpa watches it carefully. The fire must be hot enough to keep the sap boiling, but not hot enough to make it boil over. "

                                                                                                          - Little House in the Big Woods 

Crack Sauce - The Ultimate Dipping Sauce for Grill Season

This sauce has become a favorite in our family. It's spicy hot while being cool in temperature. When the beer can chickens come off the grill, or a smoked turkey comes out of the smoker, or a spicy walnut encrusted pork tenderloin comes out of the oven, a bowl of this dipping sauce sits ready. It's so delicious that it's addictive, hence the name. It's perfect for dragging bites through before gobbling!

I'm sure it has another name, but what can I say? To our family, it's crack sauce. It keeps in the fridge for about a week. Then, it tends to separate. I've shaken it back up and marveled that the pepper spiciness gets stronger. Wahoo!

Enjoy!

Crack Sauce

Makes about two cups of dipping sauce. 

Ingredients:

3 jalapēnos, stemmed, small chop

4 large cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

1 generous cup cilantro leaves and stems

1/4 c. sour cream

1/2 c. mayonnaise

1/3 c. fresh lime juice 

1 tsp. Kosher salt

1 tsp. black pepper

Place the ingredients in a blender and whiz to a smooth green flecked sauce.

NOTES: Perfect dipping sauce for roasted turkey, chicken, grilled fish, or roasted pork tenderloin. Excellent on sandwiches instead of plain mayo. If you want less spicy heat, remove some of the veins and seeds from the jalapēno peppers. 

Perfect Creamed Spinach

Spinach is my all-time favorite dark leafy green. I particularly love it this way - softly wilted in a pan of sautéed onions and butter and then tossed with a rich white sauce made with chicken broth, a bit of heavy cream and spiced with a wee bit of nutmeg.  It's heavenly, as is, but if you have pine nuts for the toasting ? Oh my, they are a nice addition to the dish.

Tangy Chinese Plum Sauce

... a bumper crop of plums ...

I know traditional plum sauce is made with red plums, but I have an Italian prune plum tree in my back yard. It was the saddest little tree when we first moved to the grey cottage, leaning pathetically  and constantly attacked by the Japanese beetles during the summer. Eight years later, it still leans slightly, but we've placed a cable around the trunk and 'trained it' to stand up straighter.

Mushrooms and Marsala Wine with Venison Medallions

Although this dish feels like fall and winter, I have a cache of venison in my freezer, dark Baby Bella mushrooms that need using, and copious amounts of garden vegetable that will be a snap to roast and steam, as I sear the venison and prepare a rich sauce to put around them.

In thinking about this meal, it occurs to me that much of the main ingredients come from our garden and from SB's passion for the hunt. Is this where I let out that primal scream that announces our sure ability to survive longer than the regular schmoe, should the apocalypse happen?  I'm not that smug, but it sure is satisfying to know that when I look at tonight's plate I can be a happy backyard gardener and look across the table at the hunting hick !

Inch thick blade steaks - trim the sides of the silver skin, but leave the center strip of fat)

Now, here's a good way to make venison ... pound out a couple steaks  (these are blade steaks, but tenderloins or chops work also!) and cut them into burger-sized medallions. Heat a grill pan until it's searing hot. Toss a pat of butter on the pan and push it around to grease the ways. Plop on the medallions and set the timer for one minute. Flip them and set the timer for another minute. Remove them to a platter and cover loosely for a couple minutes while you finish whatever sauce you've started making. Drizzle some of the sauce over top and serve them immediately.

That's it!

Pounded to about 1/3 inch thickness, sprinkled with salt, pepper, steak spice and drizzled with just a bit of olive oil

Sautéed in a bit of butter until browned and beginning to crisp at the edges, soaked in some Marsala wine and set aside to soak up the flavors... finished with cream and butter just before serving

Now, about this sauce ... it's Baby Bella mushrooms, sliced thickly (because we like a bit of chew to our food), a couple tablespoons of butter, a couple sprigs of thyme with the leaves stripped off, some salt and pepper, a couple tablespoons of Marsala wine, and some light cream and butter pats to finish the sauce.

That's it!

Pour the wine and enjoy. 

If venison is not your thing, you could do this meal with beef tenderloin and it would be pretty darn good. Go for it !

A Note About Venison ...

The big thing with venison is to have really simple side dishes (or sides that you can fuss over earlier in the dinner prep process.). In our case, we have new potatoes and rosemary for roasting and fresh green beans for the steaming. I know that I've ranted on this in earlier venison posts, but it's really important. there's nothing worse than overdone venison ... think shoe leather. It must be cooked medium rare to rare in order to maintain its moisture and tenderness. Venison is so very lean that it dries out fast and then it's useless ... make it into Slim Jims or something equally gross.

So ... keep it rare. Simple as that ...

Kale Pesto

Okay. You can turn your nose up, if you want to, but we had great pasta (and far too much of it!) last evening! This was the first time that I've made kale pesto ... and I used a recipe from Diana Henry's a change of appetite cook book. It's a 'healthy recipe', so it didn't have nuts of any sort in it. I think that when I make it again, I'll try it with walnuts and a bit more olive oil than the amount that she stipulates. This batch was really yummy ... and bright green. I used the full measure of kale and I subbed spinach leaves in instead of parsley. That worked just fine ... it needed generous salt and black pepper too.

So ... kale pesto over pasta ... next time I'm making it with Udon noodles and slivers of hot chili pepper.

Harissa Ravioli and a Red Japanese Maple

... there is nothing like a good bowl of veg and pasta ...

IHCC Pot Luck - Giada's Chicken with Mustard Mascarpone Marsala Sauce

Think juicy chicken thighs, a mountain of fresh mushrooms, ribbons of slivered onions, and that sauce. Holy smokes good ... that's what it was. This week, I took advantage of the I Heart Cooking Club's potluck challenge to go back into Giada De Laurentiis's archives and find this recipe. Giada suggests making this dish with chunks of white meat chicken breast, and of course, she would. The dish is a bit more sophisticated looking with boneless chicken breast, but I just pulled the skin off bone in chicken thighs and savored the darker, richer meat.  Giada also tells us to have this saucy dish over fettucine, but I opted for steamed rice instead ...

Winner, Winner! Chicken Dinner!

This was a busy Sunday! SB, the forester guy, gave a guided walk on a piece of conservation land this afternoon and I was the designated photographer, so dinner was thrown together when we got home from the wilds ...

Chop, chop, rub, rub, sprinkle sprinkle, whiz, whiz, roast, roast, voila! We ate like lions - lions, I tell you!

IHCC - Ugly Food From A Lovely Lady

This week's I Heart Cooking Club is a potluck affair - I decided to look around at the other chefs that the club has concentrated on over time ... and ... oh, look! Giada de Laurentiis! How can a woman who looks that good eat the killer recipes that she comes up with and remain looking that good? She must take nano-bites and eat salad the rest of the time! Take this recipe for baked potatoes with sausage and arugula.

Bourbon-Chocolate Bundt Cake with Hard Sauce Glaze

The teapot comes out late every afternoon, especially in the wintertime and when it does, there needs to be a little sweet something for SB to have with his hot cuppa. Today's sweet something is this lovely cake - the boozy bourbon and chocolate smells when baking have been just incredible. It was difficult to let it cool before drizzling on the hard sauce, but we managed. We ARE the souls of discipline and disgression - ahem.

The Butcher's Sauce - Random Recipes

 

 

an ode to orange ... 

 

What's at 'the back of  beyond' in your cupboard  (or freezer, in my case) ? This month's Random Recipe challenge was to reach into the back of your pantry and bring out a box, can, bag, packet, what ever! Next, go to a cookbook and find a recipe that uses that 'forgotten' ingredient. Well, that's clever, Dom!

Spicy Peanut Sauce ... and a Dish to Go With

the random cookbook and the middle recipe in the book ... what might it be?

Strawberry-Rhubarb Stacks and A Nod to Julie Powell

Julie, Julie, Julie! Just look what you've done! I wonder if you sometimes think about the numbers, no, legions, of foodies that have joined the blogging world because of your memoir and blog. I wonder if you are completely happy with the level of notoriety that your romping through Julia Child's masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking brought to you? It has certainly earned you the final place on Gourmet's on-line magazine list of 50 Woman Game Changers. Your humor, angst, and fearless approach toward some of those daunting recipes have inspired many a cook to haul out the cookware, sharpen the knives, track down the ingredients, and get to it in the kitchen!

Good for you! I imagine, though, that you don't give a ratatouille's ass about all the attention. Somehow, I think your mind must be on the next great project ... I see that you've spent a huge block of time recently learning the art of butchering and charcuterie. I can only speculate what will come next! Perhaps cheesemaking or pastry preparation?

Albóndigas de Jalisco - Diana Kennedy

Sometimes a love of a culture will change a person so dramatically that their life's work becomes a mission to encapsulate the best of the culture in their everyday lifestyle ... and they end up becoming the ultimate ambassador for that culture. In the world of food, we have seen numerous such ambassadors as we've investigated Gourmet's 50 Woman Game Changers - Julia Child and her love of French culture and cuisine, Elizabeth Andoh and her passion for Japanese philosophy and cuisine, and now, Diana Kennedy and her immersion in Mexican culture and cuisine.

Sicilian Tomato Sauce ... A Basic

Horrors! There were no fresh mussels at the market today, so I am faced with delaying my end of the week 50 Woman Game-Changers post ... there were some nice vine-ripened tomatoes, though. So ... I am making a couple tomato-based dishes in the next few days. A young friend has asked for a good Italian 'gravy' recipe. I guess I might just as well use this time to post for him, Jeff Smith's Fresh Tomato Sauce - Sicilian Style!