It's winter, so our CSA boxes are packed with citrus: oranges, lemons, grapefruit, to name just a few. Most varieties are great for juicing, salads and main courses, too, like risotto! I never would have guessed that barley and citrus make beautiful dinner together, but they do, especially when paired with other winter superstars like arugula, walnuts, barley and chicken stock.
Barley, like most food, tastes good with salt. Parsley, olive oil, lemon juice, some pepper and a little bit of onion make it even better. Grain based dishes like this are generally considered salads, but I like to think of them more as healthy starch options when composing meals.
We all love pesto at my house, though it is usually made with basil and pinenuts. This one is made with arugula and parsley instead. Both have parmesan cheese, olive oil, garlic and salt. I used the blender tonight, instead of the food processor, and I think the latter is better: the blender makes it too smooth.
My grocery store didn't have any halibut, but it did have sole. It also didn't have any Wondra flour, so I used all purpose. Both substitutions worked out fine: this sauce is delicious, my entire family loved their fish!
Ottolenghi's restaurants are, as far as I can tell, all in London and all wildly popular. The recipes in this cookbook are from those restaurants. Ottolenghi bases his cooking on vegetables, pulses and grains from his native Israel. Luckily for me, that includes lots of whole grains, healthy proteins and vegetables that we get in our CSA box.
It's that time again, January is over and winter is is wrapping up. Outside in my garden exciting things are happening. All of a sudden last year's baby lemons are turning yellow, ripening into 2015's crop. At the same time, next year's fruit is setting: the flowers fall off and leave behind tiny, green swellings which are the beginnings of next winter's lemons.
Vinaigrette is one of the salad dressings we rely on heartily at my house. I usually don't buy pre-made dressings, because they taste bad and are made of creepy ingredients. Plus, whipping up a simple one at home takes just a few minutes and costs a lot less.
Marcus Samuelsson says the herbs in this meal remind him of working in Switzerland, which is a beautiful image. My version of this meal reminds me of California, because it's not very often that I find as many locally produced items in one big bowl as in this one.
In his cookbook these are rib eyes on the bone, but I forgot, and bought them off. In typical Marcus Samulesson style the preparation involves an intricate and multi-stepped blending of culturally diverse ingredients that are delicious together, in new and surprising ways. In this case a coffee-chocolate rub, herbs, lemon juice and grilled garlic, jalapenos and scallions.
This may be the quickest dinner in his entire book. I whipped it up in about 15 minutes late tonight after my husband and I arrived home from separate parental duties, one PTA meeting and one trip to the local wine bar to solicit a donation for the PTA fundraiser.
The problem with beets is that they turn everything pink. So why not do it deliberately? This salad is fast to put together and serve if the beets and eggs are cooked ahead of time. Which I didn't mind doing before breakfast, because dying eggs pink is fun.
This is about the simplest way I can imagine eating purslane: sprinkle with olive oil, squeeze a slice of lemon on top, add salt and pepper, toss and serve.