Chicken with Herbed Goat Cheese and Sun Dried Tomato
My parents are both amazing cooks and much of my love and respect for cooking and eating comes from growing up in a household where most of our meals were cooked from (mostly) scratch. But what ignited my insatiable curiosity about new recipes, unfamiliar ingredients, and different flavor combinations was actually the Food Network. Cooking shows brought recipes into my home and through powerful visual persuasion (mouth-watering closeups of fresh ingredients and sizzling sautée pans), encouraged me to try these recipes at home. One of my favorite shows is the incredible and magnanimous Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa, with her to-die-for luxurious Hampton kitchen, effortless parties and luncheons, charmingly goofy Jeffrey, and fabulous table-decorating friends. Her recipes are simple, classic, and rich with quality ingredients that produce seemingly extravagant dishes.
This recipe is representative of Ina’s recipes: simple ingredients, but the end result feels luxurious and completely disguises its humble beginnings. A weekday chicken dish can be transformed into extravagance befitting a weekend dinner party by baking herbed goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes, and fresh basil underneath the skin until oozy, crispy, and totally delicious.
Chicken with Herbed Goat Cheese and Sun Dried Tomato
adapted from Ina Garten, Food Network
3 boneless chicken breasts, skin-on
4 to 5 ounces garlic-and-herb goat cheese (Ina recommends Montrachet)
3 sun-dried tomatoes, julienned
Fresh basil leaves (optional)
Good olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms
Holy neglected food blog (flog?)! The time has just been whizzing by, and I seriously have had some sort of draft for this deliciousness for like a week. But I have to get this out there, on the small chance that you TOO could find zucchini blossoms and try this before summer truly disappears (sigh)!
About two weeks before I started this post, I was able pick up a small bunch of delicate, happy zucchini blossoms at the nearby farmer’s market. I have never had zucchini blossoms before but had been dying to try stuffing them with cheesy goodness and then deep-frying them until crispy ever since I saw Giada do it in her beautiful expansive todiefor kitchen overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
The recipe is really quite simple, and as someone who doesn’t normally fry things in her kitchen for fear of hot splattering oil, inevitable potential burns, and the uncertainty of what to do with used oil, I whole-heartedly encourage you to heat up a few cups of oil because it’s TOTALLY WORTH IT.
I filled the blossoms with a combination of melty mozzarella and creamy goat cheese, seasoned with salt and pepper and fresh basil. The batter is simply equal parts flour and soda water to form the lightest crispy shell. The crispy exterior gives way to the soft creamy cheese, and the blossoms do taste every so slightly like zucchinis. It was totally awesome.
Tomato and Eggplant Salad with Grilled Cheese Croutons
Living somewhere where there are distinctly different seasons has made me realize my stomach now has seasons too: when it’s freezing and wet outside, I can’t get enough of hearty, carb-heavy foods (in seconds and thirds), and when it’s hot and sticky and the last thing I want to do is turn on any appliance in the kitchen, all I want is a cool refreshing salad. It’s about the end of June when I realize I am sick of my standard (greens, cherry tomatoes, avocados, some kind of cheese- usually feta or goat, and home-made balsamic vinaigrette with the occasional guest appearance by shredded carrots, radishes, red bell peppers, or sunflower seeds) with at least TWO MORE months of sweltering heat to endure!
I saw this white eggplant at the farmers’ market and seriously could not resist trying it. I have a thing for eggplant and I was dying to grill them and put it in a salad. The white one didn’t taste noticeably different than its aubergine counterpart.. if I had to describe it I would say maybe it was a bit milder in flavor, as most pale versions are (i.e. peaches, green beans).
Enter Mark Bittman, the guy who really knows How To Cook Everything. Last year, his handy-dandy article detailing 101 Simple Salads for the Season helped me through the rest of the summer, and still continues to be an inspiration because of the variety of salad ideas and unique flavor and ingredient combinations.
Salad #44 had caught my eye particularly, because it described, get ready for this: cutting up a crispy grilled sandwich into croutons for your salad.
Let me repeat:
Cheese + bread, warm, crisp, and a bit oozey, as CROUTONS ON YOUR SALAD?!?!?! Umm.. yeah, we have identified what shall now be known as my kryptonite. Bittman warns that this you will be doing forever… and yes, I truly hope so.
Salad of Leftovers
This salad was the end result of a little cooking game I like to call: food tetris.
You know how you often buy ingredients for a particular dish or meal, but you don’t use up the whole carton, package, or bunch? What do you do with the leftovers?
I really really get a kick out of using up every last drop in the carton, the last chunk of cheese, those last few (wilted) leaves of herbage, or that brown banana that is attracting all those flies into another meal or dessert. It satisfies not only my unwillingness to waste food (a habit ingrained into me by my Asian parents, who constantly reminded to me to eat every grain of rice remaining in my bowl no matter what because when THEY were young, sometimes the ONLY thing they ate for dinner was just rice), but also satisfies my love of puzzle-solving. One of my favorite past-times as a kid was fitting together hundreds of tiny puzzle pieces to form the picture of a jungle scene filled with exotic animals or a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night (while watching All My Children and Days of Our Lives during summer afternoons). When I learned how to use a computer, I played Tetris tirelessly for hours and hours, relishing the feeling of seeing rows upon colorful rows disappear if I stacked all the pieces in the most efficient configurations.
I get the same satisfaction now when I pack things so that every corner and space is filled or utilized so that everything is packed in the smallest amount of space possible, whether I am packing a suitcase for a trip, or the trunk with groceries and other odds and ends, or a moving van with ALL my possessions. This freaky need for utmost efficiency and also presents itself in my kitchen too, I try to cook dishes or bake items that use up whatever is left from previous meals in order to use EVERYTHING that passes through our kitchen before it goes bad. I don’t succeed all the time. But I did with this salad.
I had one cob of grilled corn, a little more than a cup of plain couscous (the other half had been made into a tasty tabbouleh salad), a handful of cherry tomatoes, some almost-too-far-gone-to-eat spinach, and a few other odds and ends (some feta and pistachios). I made couscous patties by mixing what I had with more chopped parsley and an egg, and then pan-fried those suckers. They ended up better than I expected- crunchy on the outside and the individual grains still providing some crunch on the inside, which made for a wonderful textural addition to this salad. The dressing is a simple and versatile buttermilk dressing, flavored with fresh basil. The salad actually ended up so tasty (and filling!), an added bonus to a successful game of food tetris!
Pasta Salad with Mozzarella, Sun-dried Tomatoes, and Olives
It’s just been one sweaty day after the other since July 4th, and though I AM enjoying the sunshine and ability to wear flip flops and skirts, I just wish my apartment (on the 5th floor) wasn’t such a central-air-less, heat-retaining, efficient little OVEN. This type of weather really makes prolonged oven or multiple burner stove-top usage totally unappealing. Not just for the discomfort of having to stand over heat-producing pans in sauna-like conditions, but also because of the high probability that my own sweat will season portions of the meal!
So this is the time of the year that I rely on quick dishes that require little or no stove action: salads and grilling. This pasta salad is SO bright and vibrant with juicy tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, briney olives, sharp parmesan, and a generous amount of fresh sweet basil, it’s perfect for summer-time meals, bbqs, and picnics. While the water is brought to a boil and the pasta cooks, the quick dressing of sun-dried tomatoes, capers, olive oil, and a bit of garlic can be made in a blender or food processor and the rest of the ingredients chopped. In less than 20 minutes of a single burner being on, I was back in the cooler comfort of my living room (thanks to my $90 window A/C unit, still chugging along after 3 hot Boston summers!) enjoying this awesome pasta salad!
Thanks to Kate, for sending me this indispensable pasta salad recipe!
Zucchini and Ricotta Galette
Sometimes I will happen upon a recipe and my stomach DEMANDS that I MUST MAKE IT NOW NOW NOW. This zucchini and ricotta galette was totally THAT kind of recipe. It combines all my favorite food groups: veggies, cheese, and buttery flaky crust! On Tuesday evening, as soon as I could get out of lab, I ran to the grocery store to pick up zucchini, cheese, and basil!
The recipe name is deceptively simple.. but this galette, though quite easy to put together, tastes anything BUT. The mild-flavored ricotta is enhanced with melty mozzarella and sharp salty parmesan. Thin slices of zucchini are roasted on top, flavored with a drizzle of garlicky olive oil and shredded basil. And the crust?
Oh. Em. Gee.
I have tried a fair number of pie crusts with minute variations (shortening, vodka vs. water, egg yolk), but this one, with the addition of a bit of sour cream and lemon juice, was seriously a-MAZING. It was moist and happily rolled out without any cracking or resistance. As advertised, it baked into one of the most flaky crusts I’ve ever had- which in combination with the soft cheese-y filling has pretty much set the standard now for SAVORY STUFF WITH CRUSTS.
Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup
Thankfully the sun is shining again here in Boston and it almost seems as if the whole soggy weekend never happened. Except that there is still plastic tarp, 5 gallon buckets, and residual drippage from the hole in the ceiling of our living room.
Oh, and this soup. It was warm and comforting when it was wet and cold outside, and yesterday, it was a bright and flavorful lunch. I’ve mentioned before how I love the comfort of soups and stews on cold and/or wet winter days, but even on an almost-spring-day like yesterday, I couldn’t wait to have this soup. I used to think tomato soup was kind of gross- who would want to drink spaghetti sauce?! And as with most dishes that I did not enjoy as a kid, I tasted one (from here) a year or two ago that not only completely changed my mind and caused me to seek out other tomato soups elsewhere, but also convinced me that I just HAD to try to make my own.
I have learned that home-made tomato soup (and tomato sauce) is totally different from the overly sugary and salty pre-packaged sauces and soups… it actually tastes like TOMATOES (shocker, I know… and even if your tomatoes are from a CAN. And now thinking about it, canned tomatoes actually taste better than the round red orbs trying to pass as tomatoes for most of the year at my nearest big chain grocery store, BUT I DIGRESS) and it really speaks to the whole “less is more” maxim. The tomatoes are naturally sweet and tangy, the red peppers add a taste of roastedness, and the fresh basil is just… so fresh.
If you make this soup, do yourself a huge favor and also make yourself one of these.
Outrageously good.
Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup
adapted from Use Real Butter
makes about 6 cups.
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 medium sized onion, finely chopped
2 large cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 cup low salt chicken broth (or more, I tend to like my soup a little thicker, the original recipe calls for flour to thicken the soup which I did not do in my adapted version)
1 28 ounce can of whole and peeled or diced San Marzano tomatoes, including the juice
2 roasted red peppers (leftovers from a jar in our fridge)
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 sprig fresh thyme
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons of thinly sliced fresh basil, dill, or green onions, or any combination of the three (I used basil)
- In a large pot or dutch oven, heat the butter and oil over medium-low heat. Add the onion and garlic, stirring periodically until translucent and soft. Take care not to brown them.
- Pour in the chicken stock, tomatoes, peppers, sugar, and thyme. Bring the soup to a simmer over medium heat, then reduce the heat to low and let the soup simmer, covered for about 30 minutes.
- Remove the thyme sprig and let the soup cool a little before pureeing with an immersion blender or transferring it to a blender or food processor to the consistency you like. Season to taste with salt and pepper, add the fresh herbs and re-heat if needed.
