Zucchini Pickles

So another zucchini recipe to make use of my plethora of squash! I also found this recipe from Martha Stewart and it comes from Zuni's Cafe in San Francisco. I altered it a little bit. After waiting a few days so that the flavors mingled and marinated I tasted the pickles - delicious! So much flavor. They have much more depth than store bought pickles. Admittedly, they are't as crunchy as cucumber pickles, but such a great tang and sour bite to them. I also don't like sweet pickles, and I think these have a perfect amount of sugar (I wouldn't want them any sweeter). These little pickles are also great on burgers - I tried on a juicy Trader Joe's wagyu style burger recently. The turmeric gives the brine (and pickles) a great yellow color. If you have a canner, I think you can properly can these and then you don't need to refrigerate them until you open the jar.

Ingredients:
2 medium zucchinis, thinly sliced with a mandolin
1 yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced (I also used a mandolin)
2 1/2 cups cider vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp kosher salt
2 tsp mustard seeds, crushed
1 1/2 tsp dry mustard

Indoor Clambake

I've been dying to try this all summer. The Lobster Place and Clamman both have pre-packaged, all ready versions, but I was tempted by the chorizo, onions, and garlic in Martha Stewart's recipe. It was a great, fun, and surprisingly easy meal. Good for a special occasion, or, in my case, just having girls over for dinner. The dipping sauce is delicious and much healthier than just a bowl of melted butter. So summery and festive!

The mussels were tender and delicious and the lobster was cooked perfectly. The little knuckles just melt in your mouth. The timing on this recipe is what makes everything cook perfectly. When cracking into the lobster claws, prepare to get a little messy. The corn tastes great dipped in the sauce and sprinkled with salt.

(for 4 people)
Ingredients:
1 onion, quartered
3 garlic cloves
1/2 bottle of pale ale beer (I used Brooklyn Summer)
1/2 cup water
3/4 lb new potatoes

Vegetable Garden Week 16

Attack of the monster zucchini! I picked all of the zucchinis last week on 6 days later, look what I found bursting out all over the garden. 10 zucchinis, several of which were enormous. The big one in the foreground had to be 6 pounds. My mom says those are zucchini bread zucchinis (recipe to follow). Now I'm thinking up and researching all sorts of recipes to use this plethora of courgettes.


Also ripe and happy this week were my little green grape tomatoes! Look at this beautiful plate of them. They make an excellent salad. They're colorful, sweet, and juicy. If there are tons next weekend, I'm going to try a salsa. Below, I just sliced them and tossed them with very thinly sliced Vidalia onion, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and a little julienned basil. It's so summery and fresh.

Everything else in the garden was pretty happy. The rest of the tomato plants are covered in green tomatoes, and the yellow brandywine has a few big green tomatoes that I suspect will be turning yellow very soon. I can't wait to try them! There are three pretty good size eggplants but I'm letting them get a little bigger this time. More next week - hopefully the zucchini will be a more manageable bunch!

Flattened Brick Chicken

Cooking a whole chicken in the summer seems daunting, long, and hot - but not if you do a flattened brick chicken! Flatten out a chicken and cook it in a hot skillet with weight on top and it cooks quickly and evenly and has a great crispy skin and juicy meat. Great leftovers for chicken sandwiches. Very tasty!

Ingredients:
1 2-3 pound chicken
spice rub
olive oil

Directions:
Butterfly the chicken. To do this, use kitchen shears to cut out the backbone. Turn the chicken over and press against the breast with your hand until it flattens (you'll probably hear a crack). Cut out the breast bone. Cover the chicken in a spice rub and let sit for half an hour or so.

Heat a large skillet (or grill pan) and add a little oil, then put the chicken in breast side down. Weight the chicken down with either two bricks wrapped in tin foil or another heavy skillet. (I used a pot full of water.) This helps the chicken cook evenly.

Cook on breast side until crispy and brown, about 10 minutes. Flip the chicken (wiping the bricks/skillet/pot) so it's skin side up and put the weights back on, cooking another 10 minutes or so until juices run clear. Let the chicken sit on a cutting board for about 5 minutes, then cut it up and serve! Juicy and delicious. I served it with steamed haricots verts.

Steak Salad with Chimichurri Dressing

On a hot summer night, a salad always tempts me. I'd also been craving red meat, so a steak salad seemed like the obvious choice. I used this recipe from Epicurious, with a few changes and additions. It was absolutely delicious - great garlic/herb flavor from the chimichurri mixed with the savory of the meat and the creaminess of the mozzarella. Really good summer dish - Jamie was raving about it.

(serving 2)
Ingredients:
1 sirloin steak
1 bunch haricots verts
1/2 container of grape tomatoes, halved
1 bunch parsley
2 tsp dried oregano
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp chipotle hot pepper sauce
mixed greens
8 marinated mozzarella balls, sliced

Banh Mi Hot Dogs

I had a few recipes in the cue to put up before this, but this one just needed to be posted. After sampling Asia Dog's delectable "Vinh" banh mi style hot dog a few weeks ago, I've been craving another. Since the banh mi ingredients aren't terribly hard to come by, I figured I'd try it myself. I made these for dinner and they were amazing. So flavorful with a great heat and much fresher tasting than a classic dog, and infinitely more interesting. Jamie scarfed two down and wanted a third, but settled for taking another for lunch (they're actually pretty filling!). We both can't wait to try this out for a big group BBQ. So unique, and really not too hard! I looked up a few regular banh mi recipes and mixed and matched a little, adapting them to hot dogs. Try this at your next backyard BBQ, or even just having a few people over to watch baseball or True Blood or something. Yum yum yum!

Ingredients:
(serves 2-4)
2 super thinly sliced carrots (using a mandolin, or you can grate)
2-3 super thinly slice radishes
3 tbsp sugar
1.5 tsbp kosher salt
3 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
4 hot dogs

Garden Vegetable Pasta

After picking an eggplant, some zucchini, and some basil from my garden I came back to the city to make a summery dinner. I did go out and buy some tomatoes and garlic (my tomatoes aren't ready just yet). I also used rachette pasta because I knew Jamie would like it, but use anything you've got at home. This is great and summery and is a good way to use your veggies - or those you pick up at the farm stand!

Ingredients:
3 small zucchini
1 small eggplant
3 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp (or more to taste) red pepper flakes
4 plum tomatoes, cut into cubes
1 tsp tomato paste
2 tbsp water
Basil

Directions:
Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic. Cut the eggplant into 1/2 inch cubes and add to the pan. Saute until they start to soften.

Vegetable Garden Week 15

After my hiatus in Greece, my garden was booming! The peas were finished and turning brown and the Swiss Chard were taken over by zucchini, but everything else was super happy. The yellow brandywine tomato plant is about 6 ft tall with a few big, green tomatoes. The thing is like a tree! It got so heavy I had to go buy steaks to position on either side of the garden and tie the cage to them with twine - hopefully soon those green tomatoes will turn yellow so we can eat them! The three better boy tomato plants were covered in green tomatoes (I've learned with heirlooms the plants tend to get pretty big but you get less fruit, so the yellow brandywine is huge but just has two tomatoes on it while the better boys are smaller but each had about 6-10 tomatoes already) and the green grape tomato plant has tons of little green tomatoes, some of them already edible and sweet ad delicious.

There were 4 eggplants on the eggplant plant - 1 ready to eat - so sweet and tasty. I was surprised. I've never grown eggplant before and I was kind of expecting to just get one eggplant all summer. This little plant seems to be pumping them out, plus it has really pretty, light purple flowers. Watch out for little purple thorns on the flowers and eggplant stems!

Moussaka

Moussaka is one of my favorite Greek recipes. I love eggplant and the great flavors of cinnamon and onions and garlic in the tomato-meat sauce. This is a great alternative to lasagna and is good for feeding a large group (there were six of us and we ate the moussaka twice - once the first night and then another night we ate the leftovers, yum!). It's a bit of a labor of love, so you have to set out an hour or two to make it, but it's well worth it. It also tastes even better the next day.

Ingredients:

4 eggplants

Olive oil

4 medium onions, chopped

6 garlic cloves, minced

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes in tomato puree

2 teaspoons dried oregano

1 cinnamon stick (or 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon)

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (maybe more to taste)

2 pounds ground beef

1/2 cups dry white wine

Black pepper to taste

Tzatziki

Every night in Greece we have a little cocktail hour when we snack on tzatziki, carrots, pita, olives... and drink some cheap but pretty good white jug wine while the sun goes down (not too bad, right?). Maria, the Greek woman who takes care of the house and speaks zero English, taught me to make authentic tzatziki about eight years ago. It's very simple and incredibly good - creamy, refreshing, with a great garlic zestiness. It's a wonderful hors d'oeuvres to have out at a party. This version is very simple, and I like it a lot more than those that add sour cream or dill etc, and it brings back great memories of watching the sun set!

Ingredients:
1 hot house cucumber
1-2 cups Greek yogurt (full fat is better, but you can use the low fat versions)

Saganaki (Greek Fried Cheese)

Just back from an amazing trip to Greece! I have a house in the Cyclades (my family does) and I went for a week with a few friends. Even though the kitchen is rustic - no electricity, the fridge runs on gas, etc - it is my favorite place to cook. I love to cook up a simple lunch of tzatziki, pita, and saganaki which is always a huge hit after sitting on the beach and swimming in the beautiful, salty, Aegean Sea. Saganaki is essentially the Greek version of mozzarella sticks. Usually at a restaurant, they serve it as one big square, but I prefer cutting it into little squares to make it easier to snack on and share and it's great for groups. After lightly flowering the cheese, you quickly fry it up and cover the cooked cheese with a generous dose of fresh lemon juice. The big, red, ripe tomatoes and the acid of the lemon juice cut through the heaviness of the cheese and make the most delicious lunch! Served with a cold bowl of tzatziki and some toasted pitas (and a nice, icy Mythos) it's the perfect meal for a hot, sunny summer day.

Ingredients:

1 package of Kolios cheese (a Greek semi-hard cows milk cheese)