Lemon-garlic-basil chicken thighs

My favorite salad dressing is this lemon-garlic-basil dressing, from the Stacks cookbook. I think that was my first-ever cookbook. Anyway, I made the dressing (and it fit in that perfectly-sized olive oil bottle!), and decided to use it to marinate some chicken thighs. This worked out really well. I recommend it.

So, first, I slathered the dressing all over the chicken. Then, I stuck them in a pan, and roasted them for about 45min. Occasionally, I basted the skin with the juices. I maybe did that four times during the cooking stage. I tested them for doneness when the skin had crisped up and gotten brown.

Lemon-garlic-basil dressing:
Yielded: about 2/3 cup

3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 teaspoon salt
zest of one lemon
1/2C fresh basil
3 teaspoons Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Pinch of cayenne
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Combine the garlic, salt, lemon zest, basil, mustard, lemon juice, cayenne, and pepper in a food processor and blend well. Slowly add the oil while the machine is running until the dressing is well blended and thickened. Can be made ahead and refrigerated.


Once the chicken was done, we served it on some green beans. Definitely won the Ed-seal of approval.

Gougères: two ways

Ali just returned from France, where she had gougères for the first time, and she wanted to make some. I was all for this plan, and since she happened to be in Boston, we got to work. Unsure of what recipe to use, we made two different recipes: one from epicurious, because it had ratings, and one from a random French site we'd googled using the french google. This created lots and lots of little cheese puffs, so we had ample opportunities to sample the two options. The end result: the French gougères were far superior. They just had a way better texture, flakier and moister and cheesier. They also used three times the amount of butter. Minor details.

First, the epicurious recipe:
Blue cheese gougères
Made two baking-sheets-worth
1/4C white wine
1/4C water
1/2 stick butter, cut into cubes
1/4tsp salt
2/3C flour
3 eggs, whisked
1/3C blue cheese, crumbled.

Preheat the oven to 375F. Melt the butter and the wine and water in a saucepan, add the salt, and then add all the flour. Stir vigorously for about a minute, until it's smooth and leaves a film on the bottom of the pan. We did this over the heat. Then remove from heat, let it cool a minute, and add the eggs in three installments, vigorously stirring between each. Add the cheese, and stir that in.

Grease a baking sheet. Drop little balls of dough on the sheet. You can brush the tops with egg wash, just to make them pretty, but I'm not sure that adds to the taste. Bake for 25-30 minutes, checking occasionally. I don't think you want to overbake, you don't want dry gougères.

Ali, mélangez vivement!

The other version, from the French website, was much tastier. I highly recommend making it. Totally passed the Ed-test!

Gougères au fromage
Makes lots and lots and lots, but they disappear quickly
1C water
1tsp salt
1.5 sticks unsalted butter
4 eggs
2/3C grated gruyere cheese
1.25C flour

Preheat the oven to 375F. Grease some baking sheets. Melt the butter in the water with the salt, in a saucepan. Add the flour and stir vigorously. For about a minute. Remove from heat, and let it cool a bit. Add the eggs, one at a time, and stir vigorously between. Once the eggs are incorporated, add the cheese, and stir it in. Scoop little balls of dough onto the baking sheet, and bake for 25 minutes. Don't eat them all in one seating...

Scooping the dough onto the pan.

Sweet Focaccia

I have this cookbook, from the little shop around the corner from my grandfather's place in London, called Ottoloenghi: The cookbook. I've made a couple of the salads, and they've been pretty delicious, so I thought I'd try something from a section other than the salad section. Paging through to the back, the baking section had some really pretty pictures of focaccia. That seemed like a good idea, and reading about the grape and fennel seed topping, that seemed like something different enough that I'd never come up with it on my own. May as well try it! It sounded like it would make a sweet bread, something you could eat for breakfast, or almost as dessert, but I wasn't too daunted (although Ed said it sounded pretty gross). This being an English cookbook, they were talking about grams and milliliters, luckily I have the google to help me figure out conversions.

The end result was addictingly delicious. The dough was chewy yet soft, with a crunch on the top and bottom, and a beautiful mix of sweet and savory and salty. I couldn't stop until I got halfway through the first loaf. So, as weird a combination as this sounds - try it! It's worth it. It passed the Ed-rating, despite his initial reluctance.

Grape and Fennel Seed Focaccia
Made two round flat loaves

Starter:
1.5C flour
1.75C warm water
1.5 tsp yeast

Dough:
1.5-2C flour
1 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs kosher salt

Topping:
~1C red grapes, halved
2tsp fennel seeds
1/4C granulated sugar
1tsp kosher salt

You'll need a lot of resting time for this recipe - it was 6 hours total of rising time, so be sure to plan that in. The starter has to rise for two hours, and then the dough has to rise for 2 hours, and then after shaping it, it has to rise for another hour.

To make the start, mix together the water, yeast, and flour, cover with a damp cloth, and let it sit somewhere warm for two hours, until it's doubled in size. It'll be pretty cool-looking, with bubbles that are sort of moving, like it's alive...

Add the rest of the dough ingredients to the starter, and mix that around. I found this too slack to work by hand, even with the extra half cup of flour, so I stirred with a solid spoon for as long as I had the strength to do so, and then let it sit for another two hours. By the end of that, it had doubled in bulk again, and was very loosey goosey. I dumped the dough out onto a floured surface, cut it in half, and tried to stretch each half out into a circle. I wasn't that great at making a circle, and then it stretched again when I transferred it. I lined each baking pan with coarse corn meal, and plopped on the lopsided circles of dough.


This then has to sit and relax and rise for another hour.

Then, I poked down with my fingers, to make it ridge-y and knobbly. Mix together the sugar, salt, and fennel seeds. Brush on some olive oil, dot with grapes (cut length-wise), and sprinkle on the sugar-salt -fennel seed mixture.


Bake at 450F for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat to 375 and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Enjoy!

Thai beef salad

I bought some beef the other day, top round. It came in three long strips, and I figured it would be perfect for putting on top of a salad. And then I realized that it would be even perfecter on a thai-flavored salad! The bed was rice noodles, and there were random delicious things on top. Cilantro, fried mushrooms, cucumbers, mint, basil. The dressing was a mix of lime juice, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, mirin, and spiciness. You can play with those flavors - sweet/salty/sour/hot - and anything will be delicious.
The beef was marinating in a similar sauce, but with miso paste in it. Miso, mirin, fish sauce, lime, rice wine vinegar, fresh ginger.

First I cooked the mushrooms - oyster mushrooms. Cooked in butter, with kosher salt. The best way to do mushrooms.
mmmm cilantro!

Cooked the beef for about two minutes to a side, until it was just rare-medium rare inside.
Sliced it up, threw it on top of the rice noodles, poured the dressing over everything, and voila! salad. yum.

Mango shrimp spring rolls

I wanted to make dinner one night this week, as I'm staying with Peter and Gail, and they keep feeding me, so I thought I'd make spring rolls. These turned out alright, but were too big, I need to learn how to roll the little ones. You need the squishy noodles inside to make it so that they don't break, although some of them broke anyway, but there were just too many squishy noodles, and not enough other delicious things. These flavors maybe would have worked better as a salad. Or maybe wrapping them more loosely would keep the ends of the avocados from poking holes?

Anyway, for three people we had 7 rolls, which was enough to fill us up (testament to their size), when combined with a salad thanks to Gail. I bought 12 large shrimp, and that worked well for the rolls, but if I were going to do it again in salad form, I think you'd want more shrimps. Maybe.

Mango shrimp spring rolls
Made 7 rolls
rice paper
rice noodles
12 large shrimp (raw)
1 mango
1 avocado
2 limes
~1tbs brown sugar
~1tbs soy sauce
~1/2C cilantro, roughly chopped. Mint and basil would also work. Or all three.
~1/2C bean sprouts
Red chili flakes, to taste
1/4tsp salt

Combine the juice of one of the limes, half a tablespoon of brown sugar, some red chili flakes, and a tablespoon of soy sauce. Mix it up and taste - this is the dressing for your shrimp. Adjust as necessary. Soak the shrimp in the marinade as you prepare other stuff.

For the rice noodles, boil them for 5 minutes, then drain, and toss with the juice of the other lime, the salt, and the other half tablespoon of sugar.

Slice the mango and avocado into strips.

Fry the shrimp in some oil, until they're done. It's about two minutes a side, although I suppose it depends on the size of the shrimp.

Soak the rice paper in hot water for a minute or two, one piece at a time. Once it's flexible, spread it on a plate. Put down the colorful things first, because you'll see those those through the wrapper. A piece or two of mango, a slice of avocado, one and a half shrimps, some cilantro, some sprouts, and a small handful of rice noodles. Then attempt to roll the thing up - fold in the sides, first, then roll away from you, using fingers to keep it taut.

The rice paper dries out quickly if you don't eat it immediately, so cover the finished rolls with a damp towel while you finish making the other ones.

We had a ginger-soy dipping sauce with these, that was delicious.

Will I make these again? Probably, but I'm going to try for a higher ratio of yummy-stuff-to-noodles.

Mojitos

I had oodles of leftover mint from something the other day, so we emailed Tiffany to see if she wanted to hang out and make mojitos. It seemed like a really logical thing to do. Naturally, she thought this was an excellent idea, so we got to go hang out with a friend we don't see nearly often enough, and a good time was had by all (to use an old Colby Outing Club saying. "There were no tears, and a good time was had by all" is the way you finished every trip report. Unless of course there were tears, and some people did not actually have a good time). We improvised a muddler, using a rubber band to hold together a bunch of chopsticks - it worked pretty well.



Mojitos
For each glass:
Fill about 3/4 with fresh mint leaves. Add some simple syrup, maybe 1-2 tablespoons of it. Muddle the leaves. Add about a shot of rum, preferably good rum. Pour in the juice of a lime. Fill to the top with bubble water. Stir it around with your make-shift muddler. Garnish with a lime wedge, and an optional raspberry (it's pretty!).

Greek-ish pasta salad

A while ago, Sam and Ross fed us a deliciously tasty Greek-themed salad, with barley and chicken. I was overwhelmed by the deliciousness of the lemon and olives and sweet cherry tomatoes, so set out to make the same thing last week for Ali and myself, as I was staying out there. But, being me, I naturally didn't go to look up the recipe, and sort of did a cross between tabouleh and that Greek salad and a random salad. It was delicious anyway, but I think that's just because I love olives and lemon and feta cheese. Also, having neither barley nor enough time to cook it, I used orzo, which worked really well also, and basically turned this into a pasta salad. So be it. Anyway, I recommend this one for a hot evening when you don't want to cook anything. The only time you have to apply heat is for about 20 minutes to boil water and cook the pasta, then it's back to no heating devices turned on.


Greek-inspired pasta salad
Made enough for 2 very hungry people, with a bit left over for lunch. Would probably feed 4 normal people, or 6 as a side dish
1 can chickpeas, rinsed
1/2lb orzo, cooked and cooled
~1C halved kalamata olives (or another flavorful black olive)
1C halved cherry or grape tomatoes
1/2C chopped fresh parsley
2 tbs chopped fresh mint
1/2 onion, diced
1 cloves garlic, minced
1/2C feta cheese, crumbled
2 small pickling cucumbers, chopped
1/2 orange pepper, chopped
Anything else you have in the fridge that you want to use up

Dressing:
Zest of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
about an equal portion of olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste.

Put everything in a bowl. Mix it around. Toss with the dressing. If you let it sit, it only gets better as the dressing sinks in and the flavors all meld.