Oven Roasted Mahi Mahi, Creamed Beet Greens, fresh bread

Nothing fancy tonight, a bit of fish, some creamed beet greens and a bit of bread.

Some nice pieces of mahi mahi.

Salt & pepper and hot paprika

Into a hot pan with oil, sear for 2  minutes and into a 400F oven for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, perfect fish!

A pile of beet greens

A bit of butter and chopped onion, saute.

Add a heaping tablespoon of flour, cook while stirring a few minutes. You want to cook the raw flour flavor out.

Add a cup of milk, bring to  boil and cook 2 minutes, add the greens and stir to coat.

I sliced open the bread.

Plate it all up, the greens have a pink tinge as the beets bled into the sauce. As I said, simple but delicious.

That's about it for the weekend, until next time.... Eat Well & Keep Digging

The Gastronomic Gardener
Garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
Cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt
http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener

Lamb Chops, Brussels Sprouts and White Beans

One of my favorite meals is lamb chops.  I started these yesterday. 

Let's start with the marinade. Olive oil, rosemary, garlic, Calamata olives.

Chop the garlic.

Strip the rosemary.

Place the olives, rosemary and garlic in the food processor. 

Process ingredients, while adding olive oil until it becomes a smooth fragrant purple paste.

Nice Racks!

Place Racks and marinade in large ziptop bag.

Massage marinade into lamb. Place into refrigerator until an hour before cooking. Refrigerate for  several hours or overnight, up to a 24 hours.

One of the nice things about this meal is you can prep most of it the day before. This is the case with the Brussels sprouts.

Trim and halve sprouts.

After steaming  (yes I forgot the picture) for about 6 minutes, put steamed sprouts in  cold water bath . At this point they may be drained and stored in the refrigerator before final prep.

Cut two bacon strips into lardons.

Brown in pan.

Remove lardons and drain all but 1 tablespoon of fat. Add sprouts, cut side down.

Cook until a slight char on the cut side and sprouts are heated through.

Now to get the beans going.

Ingredients
2 cups cooked white beans
2 tbs olive oil
2 carrots finely diced
2 celery ribs finely diced
2 small onions finely diced
2 cloves garlic diced
2 tbs butter
bay leaf

Breakdown the vegetables.

Oil, onions carrots celery, garlic.

Add stock butter and bayleaf. 

Simmer and stir uncovered until creamy.

While beans are cooking roast the chops. 425F for 18 minutes.

Remove and tent with foil for 5 minutes.

Sadly they were just overcooked. I like them a little pink.

Finally we can plate them up, a bed of tender beans, two double cut  lamb chops, and Brussels sprouts.

This was a lot of steps but nothing difficult.

Until next time, Eat Well & Keep Digging!

The Gastronomic Gardener
Garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
Cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt

http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener

Freezer Soup

We're busy on this beautiful day and needed a quick lunch. When in doubt I often turn to freezer soup.

This is not a glamorous soup, but it is a great way to practice a little frugality while serving something satisfying.

I believe it is closer to the origin of soup than lobster bisque (no matter how delicious that is!) will ever be. It starts with discipline, just freeze and save the edible scraps from your leftovers. Vegetables, pasta, rice are all perfect. Also small amounts of meat, cooked sausage or ground beef can go into the bucket. I store mine in a quart plastic container in the freezer. When it is full, I make soup. You may add any small amounts of vegetables or green that might be in the fridge, or really whatever you want!

Ingredients

1 qt chicken, beef or vegetable stock

1 small onion diced
1 clove garlic minced
1 tbs oil
Frozen “Bucket of leftovers”
Anything else you might have on hand, today I had a half a bag of baby spinach.
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Add oil to a soup pot over medium heat
Add onions and cook until softened, stirring often – about 10 minutes
Add garlic and cook stirring often 3 minutes
Increase heat to medium high
Add Stock and Leftovers
Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes

Taste test and season with salt and pepper.

Enjoy!

Until Next Time, Eat Well & Keep Digging!


The Gastronomic Gardener
Garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
Cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt
http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener

Tortellini with Chicken and Pesto

Monday - back to work but still need a quick dinner. I have some frozen basil that I just put up a week or so ago, a grilled chicken breast, tortellini, and garlic. Seems obvious to me! I don't have any pine nuts but do have some pecan pieces.

Get the water boiling, chop the chicken breast.

Add basil, garlic to food processor, whiz it up, scrap down  bowl, turn on drizzle in olive oil, add Parmesan, nuts, process until smooth. Taste! - I added two more cloves of garlic.

Drain pasta, add chicken and pesto, toss to coat.  Enjoy! It was delicious!

Until next time, Eat Well & Keep Digging!

The Gastronomic Gardener
Garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
Cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt
http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener

Curried Okra With Onions

Last weekend I was given a bunch - actually about a pound of  Okra.

I'm not very familiar with this vegetable having only had it in gumbo so I had to look up a recipe.

I thought this might be good.

Curried Okra with Onions

Ingredients:
•1 pound okra, washed, trimmed, cut into 1/2-inch thick slices
•2 tablespoons vegetable oil
•1 large onion, quartered and sliced
•dash cayenne pepper, or more to taste
•1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
•1/4 teaspoon mild curry powder, or to taste
•salt and pepper, to taste
 
Here we have the ingredients - simple - just the way I like it.

Clean up the Okra and cut into 1/2" pieces.

Heat the oil in a heavy pan - I used a wok. Add okra and fry for 10 minutes, stirring often until it is lightly browned.

Add the rest of the ingredients and cook until the onions are tender. The recipe says this serves six. More like three.

I served it over some leftover fried rice with a nice small just picked tomato.

If I were to make it again I'd add garlic and ginger to the heated oil before adding the okra.
Super fast, just a few ingredients, and tasty! My kind of meal.

Eat well and keep eating.





The Gastronomic Gardener
My garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
My cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt
http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener

Quick Roasted Vegetables

I found myself with an abundance of produce, but not time to can or blanch even for freezing. I hate for food to go to waste so I picked through and found the fruit that was closest to ending up in the compost bucket without actually having gotten there yet.

I came up with eggplant, peppers, tomatoes. I also threw in some  garlic, onion /celery from the pantry/fridge respectively.  You could do this with almost any vegetable you have on hand. Harder vegetables such as carrots should be sliced thin to quicken the roasting time. Quantities of any one vegetable are not very important.

Preheat oven to 350F. If you want dark carmelization turn oven to 400F

I chopped up the eggplant  (this was two Japanese eggplants)and salted it in a colander. Let it sit for up to an hour. Rinse and set aside.

Chop up everything else and put it on a sheetpan along with the eggplant. A roasting pan  with deeper sides would work fine as well.

Salt, fresh ground pepper, some basil and oregano from the garden and a generous glug of olive oil (up to 1/4 cup) to finish it off.

Put in the oven, for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until all vegetables are tender and starting to carmelize.

Serve hot over rice or pasta, or if cold add to salads, sandwiches, top eggs with it.  Makes a nice room temperature appetizer spread on  toasted bread rounds too!

Eat Well and Keep Digging!

The Gastronomic Gardener
My garden blog http://amidwestgarden.blogspot.com/
My cooking blog http://ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com/
Twitter - www.twitter.com/DavidPOffutt
http://www.facebook.com/TheGastronomicGardener