End of Summer Bounty II

Fall semester has begun and therefore I have little time to blog, but here are a few photos from the garden and kitchen this week. Contact me if you would like the recipes. Cheers!

You can roast peppers on your stovetop if you have a gas grill. After fully charring (turn every few minutes), put them in a sealed container for several minutes. Peel the charred skin and enjoy. I added them sliced to orzo with pesto. Basil & peppers are from our organic garden.



It's coho salmon time! Yum. I salted and peppered the fillets, then pan seared in a little heated olive oil, skin side down first, then slathered with pesto and covered to cook the top half.



After serving the dish as above, I decided I'd like it better if I peeled the skin and flaked the salmon into the orzo:


Earlier this week I made chicken piccata. I used the recipe on Epicurious.


Finally, here are how our banana trees are doing this year. We transplanted two of the "pups" on either side of the two "parents," and the youngins are doing quite well, with pups of their own. The parent plants have hit fifteen feet with leaves between four and five feet long. Still love the way they sway in the breeze.

Zucchini Madness

If you, like we, are inundated with zucchini right now, here are a few of the recipes that I've used to mix it up a bit. Still haven't baked with it yet this year, but I do usually make a zucchini nut bread or muffins at some point during the season.

First up, Michael Symon's Zucchini Crudo from his Live to Cook cookbook:


Nice resemblance, no? Mine is the one on the left, in the bowl. Easy and delicious. Fresh, thinly sliced zucchini and yellow squash with toasted almonds and dill in a lovely vinaigrette.

Next up, the Flat Zucchini Omelet from epicurious.com. The only change I made that I can recall is that I doubled the recipe, used a 14" non-stick skillet to cook it, and finished it under the broiler as suggested by one of the reviewers rather than flipping it. Easy peasy. I served it with a multi-grain English muffin and a PB&J smoothie. We were ready to garden.




To accompany our grilled pork chops, I made Michael Symon's Zucchini Fritters with Feta and Dill. I subbed lemon balm for the mint since we have that growing all over the yard and it's in the mint family. They were also easy and flavorful. I love me some feta.





I don't have a photo, and it's only slightly off-topic, but I'm loving cucumber sandwiches for lunch or a snack lately. Good white bread seems to work better than multi-grain, a schmear of mayo, thinly-sliced cukes, s&p, and a smattering of minced basil. Oh, my.

As G-Love is fond of saying, "can't get any more fresh, local, and organic than this!" Yay summertime!


Zucchini

And we're back...

Shoo. That was a long semester. But now it's done and we can get back to the blogging. Missed y'all!

Let's ease back into it with a photo-heavy layout of a few dishes from the past five months:

I wish I could remember which cream sauce this is, but I likely found it on epicurious, perhaps hyperlinked to the recipe for roast turkey. I think there are caramelized onions or shallots in it. It was so good. Used up leftover parmesan mashers that I'd frozen a few weeks earlier.

Standard short cook fare in our household, penne carbonara:

Another dish where the photo doesn't do it justice. The cornmeal pancake recipe is on epicurious, and any liquid in the recipe was substituted by lowfat yogurt. I've previously posted Orangette's sweet & spicy bacon recipe, and the cinnamon pecan butter pulled it all together.

This is another cold weather standard, corn chowder. Easy to whip up with pantry & fridge ingredients. The bread was homemade during Gnome's bread baking extravaganza. It made excellent bread pudding, too. Check out that crumb.

I've made these fish cakes a few times and I love them every time. Topped with a papaya salsa made with freshie lime juice, red onion and jalapeno, the cakes are made with flaked cooked fish, which I vary depending on what's on hand. In this case, I think it was mahimahi. Dry mashed potato, bread crumbs, jalapeno, red onion and egg round out the cake recipe. Reminder to self: make again soon.

What? Done so soon? Yes, but I hope to get back to regular posts now that I'm on summer break. Unless that internship comes through...

Cheers!