Spicy Shrimp Caprese with Lemon-Balsamic Vinaigrette

Summer and caprese go together like iPhone and plug-in, Mika and Joe, ice cream and hot fudge, or pick your simile.  This is true at my house and perhaps it is at yours.  It may be more true (is that possible) if you live in the places where the juicy, sweet tomatoes appear each year -- Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota,  or add your state here _______________.  This is not true in Colorado where our nights are cool, rain is sketchy at best, and the growing season is oh, about a month long.  Maybe two.

Breakfast Zucchini-Basil Boat

One big, scooped out zucchini filled with scrambled eggs, onions, basil, tomatoes+cheese.  Breakfast on the porch Just add newspaper + coffee.

Just for fun, take at look at the LA Times, who published the above photo on #weekendeats  !!!

These little boats are good for a fast summer supper, as well as for Saturday breakfast.  The "boat" is totally edible; make sure the skin is tender and eat it with a bite of salsa.  I served  this with sliced peaches and blueberries and a piece of whole wheat toast with peanut butter and jam.

The best part of the meal was sitting and eating it on the porch with Dave.  I'm grateful for the moments.  Here's our porch...not at breakfast, but you'll get the idea:

Salmon Fillet en Papillote with Shallots and Tomatoes: Celebrating Julia Child's 101st Birthday One Day Late!!

(Note to readers:  this is actually a repeat post from MORE TIME AT THE TABLE...written and posted last year for Julia's 100th birthday.... This year, I'm already back from our Colorado house and enjoying a gorgeous end of the summer in Minnesota. Have fun. This is FAST FOOD.)


Not spending the summer in St. Paul, I don't have any of my Julia books on the shelf....And it's Julia's 100th birthday!  I shipped all of the ones I needed to work on the soup cookbook and I brought my own personal cookbook, but the whole library cannot come to Colorado.  Julia's books sit in Minnesota:

Caprese with Lemon Green Beans or Garlicky Shitake Mushrooms

I'm not a vegetarian, but I adore vegetables in ways I perhaps don't adore meat, grains, dairy, or fruit.  If you do a simple, but random, google search of varieties of vegetables and then do a similar search for, say, meat, it's easy to see how the variety, color, texture, taste, and infinite possibilities draw me close, lasso me in, and tie me to the garden fence.

I also like what I call, in the summer, "Shop and Chop" meals--a quick slice or dice, perhaps a fast saute or grill (if any cooking at all), and there's dinner.  A cold bottle of wine and I'm outside under the trees for supper.

Tomato Soup Faster Than You Can Say Grilled Cheese

I'm on a fitness program that includes lots of vegetable meals for lunch.  So instead of getting tired of one green salad after another, I switch off between soup, vegetables with vegetable dip, salad, and so on.  Luckily I cook.  Today I had a taste for tomato soup and no, I didn't want canned.  I have nothing against canned tomato soup and keep it in my pantry; there are days nothing else appeals.  But today I wanted real food.

Done in under a half hour, this lusty (I almost said perky, but perky it isn't) soup just about jumped out of the pot, put its arms around me, and begged me to eat it.  If you have no fresh basil, increase the Herbes de Provence (or a combination of dried basil, thyme, etc.) to a teaspoonful and then test taste it.   Easily vegan and gluten-free (without some of the garnishes), this meal will heat everyone up despite the weather.  It's sunny, but snowy in Saint Paul today.

Christmas Omelet with Cranberry-Blueberry Muffins

Dinner Place will be on vacation for a short while.
When I've cooked a bunch more, I'll be back.  Make merry! 

While it isn't the best time of year for tomatoes in North America, there are some.  In other places, there are beautiful tomatoes available because it's summer!  Wherever you live, this is a very simple and luscious Christmas morning breakfast just for you!  If you're sharing Christmas with a few other people, enlist help and make two at a time or turn the oven on and keep each omelet warm as you make the others.  However you do it, you'll be happy you did.  And you'll be good until dinnertime.

Add a little fresh fruit and maybe a cranberry-blueberry muffin (link below) for a larger meal.


Tender is the word.  Gentle is the method.  Don't over-mix or over bake.  Butter?
Here's the Dinner Place Link for my Cranberry-Blueberry Muffins.

christmas omelet for one

• 1 teaspoon olive oil or butter
• 2 eggs or 1 egg and 2 egg whites, beaten together
• Pinch each kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup fresh spinach leaves
• 4 large basil leaves, optional
• 3-4 slices fresh tomato
• Optional garnishes:  1 tablespoon salsa or grated cheddar  

Heat the butter or oil in a small, nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until bubbling (for butter) or nearly smoking for oil.  Meantime, beat together the eggs with the salt and pepper.

Pour eggs into the pan, let set about ten seconds, and lifting edge of omelet with a spatula, let the uncooked portion of egg slide under the cooked portion.  Repeat until eggs are set.  Add spinach, basil (if using), and tomato.

Fold omelet over using spatula and tip onto warm plate.  Serve warm or at room temperature with salsa or cheese, if desired.

Have fun cooking and taking care of yourself,
Alyce

Shrimp-Quinoa Salad with Feta and Tomatoes

Hot nights:  if you skip the quinoa and buy cooked shrimp, this is a no-cook dinner.  Another option is microwave rice.

Coming back from Colorado (where we spent most of the summer with Dave working on our old house and me writing the soup book), we took mostly back roads. You can go all the way from Colorado Springs to St. Paul almost without super-highways.   Perhaps it's possible to go all of the way, but we opted for a bit of interstate here and there.  (Once you get near the Twin Cities, it's a bit tougher to accomplish since someone changed the routes from roads to vrrrooomms years ago now.) What we saw, almost all the way, was dead corn.  Miles and miles of it.  Dried out, brown, or with sprigs and shadows of green here and there.  In some cases the farmers were just cutting it down unharvested.  The photos and stories of the drought when seen on tv are one thing; feasting your eyes on hundreds of miles of it is another.  Sad.  I occasionally tried to get a photo, but nothing really came out from the car window.  My mind kept going to increased fuel prices, food prices, and hunger.

Tomatoes Stuffed with Chicken Salad

Serve with saltines.  What else?

This is an old-fashioned lunch counter meal.  You know the kind of place I mean; they still exist in some places.  If you're lucky enough to have a drugstore nearby with a counter (as am I), you might still order this blue plate special once in a while.   Living in Colorado this summer, I've missed my Minnesota haunts.  (State Fair starts Thursday; you can finally get your cheese curds on a stick fix.)

Would You Make Breakfast? Egg & Egg White Omelet Filled with Cottage Cheese on Whole Wheat Toast

 Tired of the same old, same old breakfast?  This little omelet (I cut it so you could see the filling...) sitting on a piece of whole wheat toast is so fast and so luscious.  Not only is it quick and nutritious (made with one egg and one egg white), it'll hold you until early afternoon.  No elevenses (tea and cookies in the UK) needed.   Serve it up with a few slices of great August tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, or dinner!   Try this:

Tomato-Carrot Soup for Easter or Passover--A Light and Easy First Course

Up next in the blog is a simple, yet incredibly tasty soup I made out of on-hand ingredients to preface a meal of steak with oven-browned potatoes accented with burnt onions and roasted asparagus. If your meal is easy and nearly instant, as was this, or is a holiday meal elsewhere,  what a good time to make a first-course soup. Get ready for, “Oh, you made SOUP?!” 

Baby Kale and Spinach with a Roasted Chicken Breast or...

When someone says "greens," I guess I usually think of turnip or collard greens.  Southern parents, I guess.   And while I like those on a  cold day with a big pan of crispy cornbread, that big mess of greens isn't my style all the time.  Give me a sauté pan full of teensy baby spinach just barely heated or even cooked way down with garlic as a base for fish.  Lately I've been adding kale to that mix and having that for lunch. (January, you know.)  A few grape tomatoes and a pinch of crushed red pepper and I'm that happy.  For the solo cook, both baby spinach and baby kale come in those not-so-green (tell me if  you know how to recycle them other than at Whole Foods) plastic boxes.  They keep a long time in your frig, which is useful for anyone who doesn't cook two pounds of vegetables every day.

Here's full-grown kale.  Chop it and saute it if you can't find baby kale.

Tomatoed Cod on Fennel with Sautéed Spinach

Mostly people don't realize it, but when you're out for Friday Night Fish-Fry in St. Paul (or anywhere), you're probably having cod.  It could be haddock or pollack, and we can almost be sure it won't be halibut, though that would be so tasty.  Served up with boatloads of tartar sauce and a tower of fries with cole slaw, it's nothing if not very, very beckoning.   Add to that the number of people who've traveled to the UK and are now hooked on "Fish and Chips" and you have a ton of folks walking around thinking this is one of their favorite meals. And way too often here, the fish is "all you can eat."

But get us in the grocery store or at the fish monger, and cod doesn't stand out.  Darker, sexier catches like salmon and tuna prevail and cod hasn't much to say.  I mean, what do you do with cod?  (What do you do with a lot of fish, in fact.  Whenever I'm in line to buy fish, the other customers are always asking the clerk how to fix this fish.  I've nothing against the clerks, but they are not often great or accomplished cooks.  If I can gently and gracefully chime in, I do.  Of course, if you know me, you know I'm neither gentle nor graceful.

Poached Eggs on Grilled Cheese Tomatoes

While the world waxes poetic about turkey and pumpkin pie (and I'm about to go that route, too), this week must also be about the balance.  While we'll eat like it's Thanksgiving Thursday, Friday (Saturday? Sunday?), perhaps a bit of lightness the rest of the week is in order.

Everyone who cooks for one has their favorites...a bit of poached salmon and microwaved green beans or two baby lamb chops and a spinach salad that's done in five minutes.  Maybe yours is grilled cheese and tomato soup or even sliced fresh apples with peanut butter and Triscuits. If by chance you like the grilled cheese option best, this might be your new supper.  If you adore Eggs Benedict, but don't want the muffins and Hollandaise on your thighs right now (or would like lighter fare), read and cook.  A spoonful of your favorite salsa is the perfect optional garnish.

Ratatouille (Not the Movie)

Ah, summer.

I loved the movie.
Also "The Big Night"
And "Babette's Feast"
Try them.   Food movies.  Ah.

I love the real deal better.   If you become a devoted cook, your world will revolve around the seasons.  Stews in winter.  Apple pie in the fall.  Berries in the spring.  And...
High summer: Tons of vegetables at their peak.

Tomatoes
Zucchini
Eggplant
Peppers
Garlic just  harvested

If you don't know ratatouille (the real deal), here's a definition from dictionary.reference.com:

 ra·ta·touille
   [rat-uh-too-ee, -twee; Fr. ra-ta-too-y^uh]  

noun

a vegetable stew of Provence, typically consisting of eggplant, zucchini, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, and garlic, served hot or cold.

My basil, yellow zucchini, and Japanese egglant in the bath together.

I am unsure if I would call it a "stew."  I'm thinking a melange suits my ratatouille better.  This mixture of great vegetables, some cooked separately and some together (all mixed in the end) is, like much cooking, a totally personal dish.  While it can be a side dish, a main, served over pasta (rice, cous cous), or in an omelet, it can contain various proportions (depending on your garden/taste or market) of the vegetables mentioned above.  It can have more or less (I like more) garlic.  It can have crushed red pepper.  Fewer tomatoes.

The vegetables could be grilled, then mixed.  Or sautéed in the typical way.  I have, in a pinch, frozen it and brought it out in late fall so we can close our eyes and drum up summer days.  Tell me how you make and use yours?   For a solo cook, this is perfect.  You can share with a vegan friend, keep some for tomorrow, cut the recipe in half, or do it all and throw containers in the freezer for lunches. Here's a starter recipe:

Tabbouleh--No Cooking Summer Meal

 One of my very favorite summer meals (or sides) is tabbouleh, which is a middle-eastern salad made with bulgur wheat (dried wheat that you must reconstitute with liquid).  It's a cool, light dish made with little effort, though the wheat must sit in water or lemon juice (perhaps other things) for an hour or so to plump up and be edible.  One of the joys is there's no cooking.  The needed water can be heated (some people don't even heat it) in the  microwave and that's quite a boon on really hot days when even turning on one burner sounds like punishment.  We  had 102 the other day in St. Paul and I refused to do anything but shred some salmon into a salad.  We would have gone out, but the old restaurants around us probably weren't any cooler.

A little research makes it appear that Lebanese tabbouleh contains more herbs than wheat and if you're interested in that version, check out David Lebovitz' recipe here.   While you're at it, cruise around David's lovely blog and come out wanting to read it regularly.  He also has a few books that are favorites of mine....  THE PERFECT SCOOP  and THE SWEET LIFE IN PARIS are two.  READY FOR DESSERT is the newest, I think...but go to Amazon and check out the fun list.  If I have to make ice cream, I look no further than THE PERFECT SCOOP and neither should you.

If you're ready to try my version, read below.  Mine is a combination of recipes (particularly Ina Garten's from THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA PARTIES --PAGE 113--  and the recipe on the back of Bob's Red Mill Bulgur Wheat). Change it up to suit you; why not?    This is all about vegan, vegetarian, healthy, filling, inexpensive (yes, you need fresh herbs no matter what) and...yummy.  Note:  I store my bulgur wheat in the freezer. Oh, and you can make tabbouleh tacos ( I do this; I don't know if anyone else does--read my article on examiner.com) or you can also listen to "The Tabbouleh Song" on youtube.  I think tabbouleh goes a long way... I'm thinking of tabbouleh stuffed green peppers or leaves of cabbage next.

Tabbouleh my Way

 1 c bulgur wheat (comes bulk in some stores  or in a 1-2# package by Bob's Red Mill or others.)
1/2 c fresh lemon juice
1 c boiling water
2 t kosher salt
1/2 t freshly ground black pepper

Mix all of the above ingredients together well and let sit 45 minutes-1 hour.

 Meantime, chop

1 c fresh parsley
1/2 c fresh mint
1 c tomatoes
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded (peel with potato peeler, slice the whole thing in half lengthwise and, to remove
   the seeds, take a spoon and scrape it down the middle of each long half.)  If you use English (or hothouse) 
    cucumbers, you needn't peel them.  American cukes are often waxed and the skin is difficult to digest.)

Mix together with softened bulgur wheat mixture  and stir in

1/4 cup best quality you can afford extra virgin olive oil.

Taste and adjust seasonings.  Need more salt?  Try 1/4 t more.  Dull?  Add a few grinds more of black pepper or a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes or even a drop or two of hot sauce.  Just lacks something?  Think acid and squeeze a little more lemon juice into the mixture.  Let the ingredients have fun with one another for a bit and taste again.

Let sit 30-60 minutes before eating if you can wait.

Note:  If you're not going to eat all of this, only put tomatoes into today's portion.  Refrigerate the leftovers and add the rest of the tomatoes tomorrow when you'll eat the rest.

Gluten free?  Try quinoa or wild rice in place of bulgur wheat.

Lovely with grilled  (or just cut up and/or heated) pita bread and a bit of hummus and/or feta.

Have fun cooking and taking care of yourself,
Alyce

Cherry Tomato Chicken Pasta with Basil

With rotini.

As cooks, we sometimes wake up with something special on our minds.
Something that just keeps going round and round and, until we make that dish, we just can't do anything.
No one should get in our way then.  No how.
Then we go to the grocery store.
Are way-laid by a point of entrance display of, say, raspberries.  Or avocados.  Or, in this case,
CHERRY TOMATOES.
I had every intention of making a Splendid Table newsletter dish called something like "Sicilian Chicken."
Until I saw cherry tomatoes

10 PINTS FOR $10

And my world went spinning until I could figure out and make  (a large detour from Sicilian Chicken)

Cherry Tomato Chicken Pasta with Basil
  Serves 4 or 2 very hungry people.  Can divide in half to cook only 2 portions

Here with linguine.

• 3 pints cherry tomatoes*  (Can use 6-8 Roma tomatoes, chopped, too)
• 2 tablespoons plus 2t olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus a little extra for chicken
• 1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper, ditto
• 5 cloves garlic
• 1 small red onion, sliced
• 8 oz sliced mushrooms* (optional)
• Pinch of crushed red pepper*
• 1/4 cup white wine or chicken broth
• 1/4 cup kalamata olives, chopped* (optional)
• 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, chopped very finely*
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts*
• 3/4 pound whole wheat linguine or other pasta
• 10-12 fresh basil leaves (or 1-2T dried)*
• 4 tablespoons gruyere or Parmesan cheese, grated, optional*

*To purchase if not in pantry.

1. Put a 10qt pot of salted and peppered water (2/3 full) for linguine to boil.  Add a few leaves of fresh basil if you have them.  Lower heat a little and leave water ready for pasta as you make the sauce
2. In a deep, 12 or 14" saute pan (skillet/fry pan) or a good-sized (3qt+)saucepan,  heat 2T olive oil over heat and add tomatoes, salt and pepper.  Cook 10 minutes until tomatoes begin to pop, stirring often.  Add garlic, onion, mushrooms, dried red pepper, wine, olives and rosemary.   Continue to cook for another 10 minutes as tomatoes begin to fall apart.  Stir regularly.
3. Heat another saute or grill pan and add 2t olive oil. (See Solo Cook's Note below.)  Salt and pepper chicken breasts and grill very briefly, about 1 minute on each side.  Lower heat under tomato sauce and add the chicken to the  sauce.  Cover and cook at a low simmer for about 12 minutes.
4. Bring pasta water back to a rolling boil and add linguine.   Let covered chicken in sauce sit 10  minutes.   Test pasta for doneness (there should be a little resistance to your teeth)  and pour out into colander in sink.
5.  Divide the pasta into four pasta bowls and top each with a piece of chicken and a good serving of the tomato sauce.
6. Garnish with torn fresh basil leaves, if using, and a dusting of fresh ground pepper.  Sprinkle with cheese, if desired.

Options:  Add some finely chopped zucchini to the tomatoes.

Solo Cook's Notes:  If you don't have the required pans, cook the chicken first and set aside, covered, to keep warm until the sauce is done in the large saute (skillet).  Then add the chicken.

Wine:  We liked a not-so-rough chianti with this dish.  Don't buy the bottom of the barrel, literally.  Go up one notch to a chianti classico for a tish more smoothness in your mouth and in your stomach.

Note:  additional photos added 11/7/12

Have fun cooking and taking care of yourself,
Alyce
Note:  Originally posted at http://www.moretimeatthetable.blogspot.com on May 2, 2010