Italian Sandwiches

This was a quick and simple meal. My wife made a salad.

And I put together some "Italian" sandwiches. In Italy

these would have been simpler. First some crusty bread.

I cut the middle third out, as the loaf was quite thick. We used

the middle thirds for toast the next morning with scrambled eggs.

I spread some of the pesto I'd previously made on one side, then

some sliced tomato (more on these later).

Followed by mozzarella, and in her case, proscuitto. Then into the

toaster oven.

The end result was delicious.

I'd come across these assorted heirloom tomatoes the other day.

They looked so pretty, I just had to have them.

Lemon Pasta

This is a light summery dish. I cut a fistful of parsley, as well as a collective fistful of sage, rosemary, and thyme, and finely minced it up. I got to use one of my favorite knives for this. It's shaped like a pair of cresent moons set in parallel, with a pair of handles on the ends. You rock it back and forth over a pile of fresh herbs, and then the herbs are minced. I also zested and then juiced a lemon, pressed some garlic, and halved a dozen grape-sized tomatoes.


Warm a generous amount of olive oil, and heat the garlic for a minute or two. DON'T brown the garlic. Remove from heat, then mix in the lemon juice and zest. Add the parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Top with tomato halves and serve.

Pesto

We keep an herb garden on our deck. Some things do better than others. Rosemary is nearly immortal around here, and sage, oregano, thyme, and lavender all do spectacularly well.

Unfortunately, we have a difficult time with basil. This one's less emerald than I'd like it to be. In fact, parts are downright yellow. This afternoon, I trimmed it aggressively, and with the trimmed portions, I'm going to make pesto.

I start with a few cloves of garlic in a food processor. Oops, I meant to mince those.

It is, after all, a food processor.

I toasted some pine nuts and in they went.

Then as much basil as I could fit into the processor (very observant readers may notice that not all of that is basil. Five points for correctly guessing the secret ingredient du jour).

Some hard Italian cheese. I think this is a blend of parmesan, peccorino, and romano.

A turn or two of cracked black pepper.

Some olive oil.

Blend, then scrape down sides.

Repeat until smooth.

My
wife bagged it into five or six sandwich baggies, and we put them in the freezer. I plan to use them here and there for the next two months.

By the by, this whole process took twenty minutes.

Salmon, Redux

Tonight, we went with the cedar plank salmon I've previously mentioned. This
time I've got pictures.

We start by soaking the plank (it's about a fifth of an inch thick) in water for an hour or two. Lay the salmon on the plank, and then cover with brown sugar, pepper, and other select spices.


I learned how to tell when fish is done from my father in law. I look for the layers of tissue to begin to separate, so the side of the fish looks a bit like an accordion. In the process, the plank blackens and the sugar caramelizes, then burns. It ends up looking like this.

The finished product. Note the accordion effect.



My wife also made a delicious salad, and we had asparagus.

Tuesday, July 17

My carpool ran slow today, so dinner was rushed.

I made a pasta, and my wife made a salad. I sauteed some garlic, added some julienned zucchini and goat cheese, and mixed it with pasta and some parsley, basil, and sage. I also cooked some scallops in a small pan on the side for my wife. I think that next time I should use less butter to sautee scallops.

Wednesday July 11, 2007

A slightly unusual meal this evening. Sometimes, particularly in summer, we make a collection of not necessarily related platters of finger foods. Usually we have some sort of bread and cheese, some vegetable dishes, meat if she's lucky, and some fruit.

I made something in between a caprese and a salsa: tomatoes, onions, parsley, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and some lemon juice. We put it on top of some toasted slices of french baguette.









My wife sliced up a nectarine and some gouda cheese:

We also had some corn. It was tasty, but didn't photograph well. The flash seems to reflect too much off of the kernels.

The corn, tomatoes, and nectarine were all from a roadside farm on the Eastern Shore. We picked them up Sunday afternoon on our way home. I'd give them a nice plug, but I don't remember their name. The corn was especially tasty, as Maryland Eastern Shore sweet corn tends to be. I doubt other states have corn this good.

Also, for future reference, July 11 is "Free Slurpee Day" at 7-Eleven. You can get a 7.11 ounce slurpee, for free. For unknown reasons, 7-Eleven employees HATE "Free Slurpee Day". Also, I don't drive past enough 7-Elevens on my commute.

So now I'm a restaurant critic

I never intended to do restaurant reviews, but that's right out the window.

Disclaimer: there are many words following that will be misspelled, incorrect, inconsistent, and possibly flat out wrong.

My wife and I went to Lebanese Taverna in Baltimore tonight. This may have changed my life. I knew I liked hummus and babaganush, but tonight I discovered that Lebanese food kicks ass. We had something called "mezza", which amounts to a platter with several small portions of different things. We had babaganush (eggplant pureed with olive oil and tahini), hummus (same thing, but chick peas instead of egplant), falafel (fried patties of chickpea and something green), mousakka (eggplant stewed in tomatoes), swiss chard in tahini sauce, tabouleh (parsley/tomatoes/wheat with olive oil), and grape leaves wrapped around something the waiter assured me was vegetarian. There were also some sausages fried with onions, a pastry containing beef, lamb, and pine nuts, and something that looked like a meaty falafel. We enjoyed an unassuming bottle of wine, which turned out to be perfect since it stayed out of the way of the riot of flavors going on with the meal. We finished off with Arabic/Turkish coffees and some baklava.

The food was amazing. Neither one of us knows much about Lebanese food (other than that it's similar to Egyptian), so there's the chance that we mixed up the condiments and did the Lebanese equivalent of spreading strawberry jam on a pepperoni pizza. I don't care even if we did. The babaganuch was very good, but the hummos was the best I've ever had. It had just a hint of sweetness to it, like someone was walking past carrying vanilla beans. The taboole was so fresh it brought tears to my eyes (partly because while we were at the beach, my parsley dried out and died, but mostly because it was so good). My wife enjoyed the sausage, but it didn't seem to be anything special. She was more fond of the pastry/meat (I think they may have been called "kibba"). Also, "Turkish" coffee, as far as I can tell, means "you aren't sleeping tonight. Tomorrow doesn't look good either. By the way, you can fly."

The wait staff was attentive, and seemed genuinely pleased to answer questions about the food. At one point, there was a translation error (strained yoghurt != sour cream), and our waiter seemed a little bit offended that we might mistake a staple of his native land's cuisine with a spoiled milk product. He went so far as to explain how to prepare several of the things we ate tonight.

We would have been hard pressed to break a hundred dollars, but we hit fifty without even trying. Well, throw in a generous tip, and we were close to a hundred, but we also had a bottle of wine, dessert and coffee. I someone's looking for a nice anniversary dinner I can't say enough good things about this place. You cannot find a place more tailor-made for mixed marriages (or marriage-like domestic arrangements) where one partner is vegetarian and the other not. In fact, it was that facet that caught my wife's eye when she read about this restaurant in the Sun.